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sneezedarling · 1 year ago

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painkillers

vesen request, 2.1 k, cold fic ty to @scatter-snz for this elite prompt i hope this is what u had in mind!!! jin-young is a cop (he has the kink because of who i am as a person) vesen is a big tall hot alien assassin aliens and humans are working together but it's still pretty new and things are awkward jin and vesen 100% fall in love with each other eventually that's basically all you need to know

It's Jin's first day being back after a record two days off. In his six years on the force, he can't remember the last time he took actual sick leave. To be fair, he doesn't get sick that often and when he does, he's aways been the type to grin and bear it. Part upbringing, part police conditioning. If you're not dead, you're fit to serve. Or at least that's the way it always has been. The Kheelen changed that. Human officers aren't spread thin these days due to the partnering initiative. So his cases that would have once fallen to the wayside in his absence now fall to his partner, Vesen. And he's expected to trust that his taciturn, ill-mannered Kheelen counterpart can handle that shit on his own when Jin is otherwise indisposed.

For the most part, Jin does. Vesen may be an ass, but he's a competent investigator. Unfortunately, he and Jin's methods when it comes to gathering information are still wildly disparate. Something he knew, but didn't truly understand the consequences of until now as he sits across their latest subject in the interrogation room.

In the two days Jin took to nurse the cold from hell, it seems Vesen has taken it upon himself to put the fear of God into this man.

The man is visibly sweating. His eyes are only focused on Jin, though every so often they twitch Vesen's direction only to snap back as if his very image is a chemical burn. His cuffed hands tremble on the steel surface of the table and he picks at his cuticles the longer they sit there. Jin doesn't blame him, necessarily. Vesen is, objectively, terrifying. Even just sitting like this you can tell he's the apex predator in the room. He's so much bigger than both Jin and the other man--he overpowers the chair and the room itself, looking comically oversized for the entire thing. Jin thinks all the Kheelen look a little silly in the human precinct, actually. Crunching themselves into tiny desks, massive hands cupping small coffee mugs, ducking under doorways--it'd be laughable if they weren't all sure the Kheelen would crush their skulls for even a giggle about it. Jin sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. Intimidating is usually an advantage in an interrogation, but whatever Vesen's done to this guy over the past two days has pushed it over the line. He's not just intimidated, he's shitting his pants. There's no way they're getting through to him now. And frankly? Jin is too tired to rectify the situation. He's still not feeling great. His head is fuzzy and dulled, his painkillers are wearing off, and part of him knows he should be back in bed. But he's legitimately worried Vesen will frighten this man to death if he leaves him alone with him for any longer, and that's a bad look for everyone. Sniffing softly, Jin blinks and tries another tactic. "We want to help you, Anish."

Vesen scoffs at this, and Jin just barely manages not to roll his eyes. "But you have to give us something to work with," he continues.

Anish shivers and shakes his head, "It doesn't matter! You know it doesn't! These bastards are taking over and they're just pretending to play nice until they don't have to anymore." Oh boy, here we go. Vesen's hackles rise, just as Jin expects. The alien leans forward, a muscle in his jaw jumping. Artificial light flickers over his lilac skin and makes his dark hair shine like ink. "You dare insinuiate my people are not here out of good faith?" he hisses, sharp canines flashing, "When you are accused of aiding in a terrorist attack against them?" Jin reaches out for his arm. Down, boy. His fingers drift over steel muscle beneath Vesen's uniform as he tries to tug him back into his seat. He's about to say something to try and reign him in when he realizes with sudden horror that he's about to sneeze instead. "Hhh?" He quickly turns away, angling himself away from the table and steepling his hands over his nose and mouth. His eyebrows crash together as an embarrassingly sharp breath snags in his lungs before-- "chhSH’iew!!"

And it's never just one. "CHshISHh’iu!"

Two is actually pretty good for him, especially with this fucking cold. He gives a tentative sniffle before raising his head and clearing his throat. The tickle abates for the moment, but he can feel it buzzing dully in the back of his sinuses, tickling in the corners of his eyes. Ordinarily, he wouldn't care. Sneezing in public isn't his favorite thing, given how he feels about the activity in general, but he's never been good at stifling so it's not something that can be avoided. But sneezing in front of Vesen is a new hell in and of itself. Without even looking, he can feel the intensity of his partner's gaze on him and it makes heat begin to crawl up his throat. Fucking hell. "Excuse me," he says with a soft sniff and clears his throat again.

At the very least, he's dispelled the tension. "Arguing about who started what or whose intentions are genuine isn't going to get us anywhere. So let's not even get into that," he says, sending Vesen a warning glance. Vesen, he suddenly notes, is staring directly at his nose. For some reason that revelation sets off a nuclear detonation in Jin's lower belly and all the blood in his body rushes south. Self-consciously, Jin rubs at his nostrils and tries to think about anything else. But that only aggravates the dormant tickle, and he has to press his tongue to the roof of his mouth to curb the impulse. "Fine," Vesen hisses, turning his eyes back to Anish, "Then let us stick to the facts." Anish gulps. Jin strokes a finger down the datapad in front of him, bringing up a few files. They could pin Anish with his money transfer trail. Or his text messages. He and Vesen haven't which way they were going to do this--they hardly ever agree anyway--but he shifts the pad closer to his partner so that he can look too. "The facts are, you are a coward, Anish," Vesen suddenly purrs, "And you will not survive a week in prison if I put you there." Jin could strangle him. He does roll his eyes this time and looks toward the ceiling, as if asking some higher power for the strength not to. "What my partner means is that you nee--" The bright lights overhead tease the last bit of the tickle out at the most inopportune time. The fuzzy, static feeling inside his head snaps like someone struck a bolt of lightning into the middle of his face. He whips to the side, his elbow in front of him and his hand braced on his opposite shoulder. "Hh--excuse meehh'IIsHH!"

He mists the inside of his elbow, shakes his head softly and then gears up for another. His breath stumbles, eyelashes fluttering. "Are you going to continue sneezing?" Vesen deadpans. "Hhhuh?" Jin blinks blearily, his cheeks going red as he tries--unsuccessfully--to pinch off the next one, "nnTTchSHH'iu!"

"Madrax. What is that inane human saying? Bless you, Jin-young."

Vesen stands as Jin pulls a crumpled tissue from his pocket and tends to his nose. In the next second, he feels his collar being tugged and himself yanked up from his chair. Feet stumbling under him, he struggles to get his balance for a moment until Vesen's large hand steadies him at the small of his back. Vesen's low voice simmers with what sounds distinctly like a threat, "We will return, Anish. Make yourself comfortable."

Then, before Jin knows what's happening, he's being guided out of the interrogation room and back into the hall. The door shuts and Vesen's hand retreats from his back. In a moment, the alien is towering before him, arms crossed over his broad chest and staring down imperiously at him. "Jin-young," he says disapprovingly. Jin blows his nose softly and retrieves another crumpled tissue. "Vesen."

"You are still ill." "I'm on the tail end of it."

"I do not wish to work with you when you are not well."

Jin scoffs, dabbing at his red nostrils, "I thought the Kheelen didn't get sick. I'm pretty sure you can't catch this."

"It is not my well-being I am concerned for."

Jin's eyebrows shoot skyward. Vesen, concerned for someone besides himself? No fucking way. He might have said as much if his nostrils didn't suddenly swell double. He crushes the tissue to his nose and mouth to muffle a tired sneeze.

"hdj'SHMMf!!"

"Bless you."

Jin blinked and gasped, "Hh'chhmpf!"

"Bless you."

Jin adjusts the tissue to try and find a dry spot, missing the next sneeze entirely and directing it to the floor. "You don't have to say it every ti-hiime--hhCH'ISSH'iu!"

"And why not? Bless you. You said it is something humans say when another sneezes. You are sneezing, are you not?"

Jin blushes darkly as he attends to his nose. Does Vesen have any idea what he was doing to him? Clearly not, or else he'd be raking him over the fucking coals for it. But somehow him being oblivious is making it so much worse. "Look who's suddenly so concerned over human-Kheelen relations," Jin gripes hoarsely, trying desperately to deflect. Anything to stop talking about him sneezing and Vesen blessing him. He'd rather be waterboarded. "You should go home, Jin-young." "And leave you to eat our sole witness alive? I don't think so." Vesen bristled, "You doubt my abilities."

"If we were torturing the guy? Not for a second. But we're trying to get him to talk to us, Ves." "Ah yes, and sneezing at him incessantly is doing the job just as well. Perhaps there is some merit to that," Vesen leans forward, grinning, "You look so unspeakably pathetic that he might take pity on you and finally tell us the truth."

Jin tosses his sodden tissues in the nearby wastebin and scrubs at his face.

"Fuck you," he groans, "Can we just go back and get this over with?"

"No, you are going home."

Vesen grabs his upper arm, his grip like a vice. Jin never really forgets how strong the Kheelen are, but every so often a brazen display hubles him completely. Vesen steers him effortlessly back down the hall without any hope of him struggling against him. "Wait, Vesen, c'mon--" He struggles anyway, just on principle. But a moment later he yanks on his grip unintentionally as he wrenches away from him with another ill-timed sneeze. "Hh'CHISSihuh!" He nearly bends double on that one and Vesen abruptly pulls him to a stop. The alien holds fast to his arm as if he can sense that Jin is going to lose his balance if he's not tethered to anything. "hah'hhCHHishh! iSSCchuh!" His ears begin to ring. Distantly, he's aware of Vesen's other hand bracing against his shoulder. That second point of contact sets his blood on fire. Before he can think too hard about that, another sneeze tickles the inside of his sinuses and he attempts to smother it with his free hand, "PpshhiSHHch!"

"Bless you," Vesen sighs as Jin straightens back up wearily, "Are you finished?"

"Yes," Jin lies and then shakes his head rapidly, turning away and pinching his nose between his thumb and forefinger, "NnghsSHH'iu!"

Vesen taps his shoulder. It almost feels...sympathetic?

"Go home, Jin-young. I will wait until you are well again to interrogate our witness."

Jin sniffles and glances up with watering eyes. "W-wait, really?" It's an unexpected gesture of charity from Vesen who has been historically uncharitable all the time he's known him. He narrows his glassy eyes, skeptical. Or at least, he tries to look skeptical despite the fact that his heart is in his throat because Vesen is still holding onto him and just watched him sneeze his head off with rapt, disgustingly erotic attention. "What's the catch?" "There is no catch. Just go before I lose my patience," Vesen said.

Jin knows better than to argue with that. Vesen is someone who loses his patience extraordinarily quickly, and it's never pretty. If he's giving him an out, Jin might as well take it.

Sniffling, Jin nods and gives him a tiny salute, "Thanks, Ves."

Vesen finally lets go of him. He grunts in response, gives him one last unreadable glance, and then turns on his heel. Before Jin can say anything else, his impossibly tall figure disappears back down the hall towards the interrogation room.

Jin isn't totally sure, but he thinks Vesen might not be such a bad guy after all.

That, and he's suddenly unreasonably horny.

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sneezedarling · 1 year ago

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Atypical Occurrence [1/?]

Happy birthday to my dear friend, @caughtintherain!! I wanted to give you some Vincent suffering to chew on for the occasion, so please take this fic (or, first part of a fic) as a gift <3

this is an OC fic - here is a list of everything I’ve written for these two! chronologically, this fic takes place a month or so after the last installment leaves off :)

Summary: Vincent shows up late to a meeting. It just goes downhill from there. (ft. fake dating, the flu, a house visit)

—

Vincent is late.

Yves tries not to stare at the empty seat across from him. The meeting—their first meeting of the day—started five minutes ago. If there’s anything Yves knows, it’s that Vincent always comes in early.

In stumbles Cara, handling a morning coffee with probably more espresso shots than anyone should have at 8am. Then Laurent, briefcase in one hand, paging through a folder of files in his other. Then Angelie, Isaac, Garrett, Ray, Sienna. Then they get started, and Yves turns his attention towards the graphs projected onscreen at the front of the room, and tries very hard not to think about Vincent.

It’s five minutes later that the door swings open, near-silent.

Sienna—who’s presenting—stops, for a moment, to look back at Vincent from where he’s standing in the doorway, which means that of course, everyone looks.

Cara turns around in her seat, raising an eyebrow. Angelie frowns at him.

“Sorry I’m late,” Vincent says, quietly. “It won’t happen again.”

Isaac shrugs. Angelie looks a little concerned, but she turns back to her work, anyways. Sienna resumes her presentation. All in all, it’s nothing—or it should be nothing. Probably traffic, on the way here; a particularly unlucky commute. An unlikely occurrence, but—to anyone else—not anything worth dwelling over.

It might be a sufficient explanation, if Yves didn’t know better.

Vincent takes care to close the door quietly behind him, then heads over to the only open seat, across from Yves. He unzips his briefcase, quietly, unobtrusively, and takes out his laptop. Yves tries to focus on what Sienna is saying—she’s giving a review of a client’s current investment strategies; he’d reviewed her work on this just a couple days ago.

Vincent asks good questions throughout—he always has a good sense of what areas still lack clarity, Yves has found. Today is no exception. He takes part in the meeting with such calculated precision that Yves almost misses it.

Almost misses: the slight stiffness to his shoulders, as if it’s taking more than the usual amount of effort to keep himself upright. The way in which he clears his throat before speaking, like it might actually hurt. The way he rests his head on one hand, halfway into the meeting—as if even now, barely forty minutes into the workday, he’s already exhausted.

It’s subtle enough to go unnoticed, subtle enough that Yves wonders if he’s just reading too much into it—if, perhaps, Vincent is fine, after all.

—

He doesn’t see Vincent again until lunch.

Or, more accurately, he doesn’t see Vincent again until he’s headed down for lunch with Cara and Laurent. Vincent is already on his way out of the cafeteria, a takeout container in hand.

“You’re not going to eat here?” Yves asks.

Vincent doesn’t look at him. “I have some work to get done at my desk,” he says. He clears his throat again, like it’s irritating him.

“Okay,” Yves says. Vincent turns to leave, and Yves thinks of a hundred ways in which he could possibly prolong this conversation, and then decides against it. Vincent is already so busy.

“You look tired,” he settles on, instead.

He expects Vincent to dismiss this, to reassure him that it isn’t true. But Vincent looks up at him at last, blinking, as if he’s surprised that Yves noticed at all. His eyes are a little dark-rimmed underneath his glasses.

He doesn’t deny it, which is as much of a confirmation as Yves needs.

“The sooner I can get this work done, the sooner I can go home,” he says. Yves supposes he can’t argue with that.

“I guess I’ll see you around, then,” Yves says, even though he wants to say more, even though he feels like there’s more that he should be saying. “Don’t work too hard.”

Vincent nods, at this, and resumes walking.

—

Yves is probably overthinking it. There isn’t anything concrete, really, to justify his concern.

Vincent’s lateness to the meeting could just as easily be the consequence of an alarm he’d forgotten to set, his exhaustion just as easily a side effect—of recent late nights in the office, of arbitrary changes to the projects he’s on, of last-minute demands from clients.

The next time he sees Vincent is at the end of the work day. Yves always takes the elevators on the north end of the building—they’re ones that lead directly out into the parking garage. When he gets out to the hallway, Vincent is already standing there, waiting for the elevator.

Yves watches Vincent stiffen, slightly. Watches him raise one hand up to his face to shudder into it with a harsh, “HHihH’iKKTSh-hUH!”

A thin tremor runs through the line of his shoulders, as if he’s too cold, even though the office air conditioning is no colder than usual. His hand, cupped to his face, remains there for a moment more before he lowers it.

He sniffles, then, rummaging through his pocket for—something. When he doesn’t find it, he just frowns a little, sniffling again.

“Bless you,” Yves says.

“Yves,” Vincent says, his shoulders stiffening a little. He clears his throat, turning around so that he can address Yves properly.

It’s only a few seconds later that he’s turning sharply away, tenting both hands over his nose and mouth for—

“Hh-! hHiH—HIHh’DZSSschh-uhh! snf-!”

“Bless you again.”

Vincent sighs. “Don’t bother.” He really looks exhausted, Yves realizes. During their brief interaction at lunch, he’d already sensed as much, but the harsh white glare of the bright corporate lighting only makes it more evident.

Vincent looks a little paler than usual, if only slightly, and there’s a slight flush that spreads itself over his cheekbones. He looks—well, nearly as put together as always, distilled only by the slight crookedness of his tie, as if it’s been on too tight; the near-invisible sheen of sweat over his forehead. The slight redness to the bridge of his nose, the slight shiver to his hand as he reaches up to adjust his collar.

Yves frowns, taking this all in. “You look kind of…”

“Terrible?” Vincent finishes for him.

Yves winces. “...Well, terrible is a strong word. I was going to say, you look like you could use some sleep.”

“I’m… feeling a little off,” Vincent says, staring straight ahead, as if it’s not an admission at all. But Yves suspects, from the way he avoids eye contact, that perhaps it was something he was intending on keeping private. “You should keep your distance.”

The elevator dings. The sliding doors part, and he steps inside.

“First floor?” Yves asks, hesitating next to the panel of buttons.

“Yes,” Vincent says. Then, quietly: “Thanks.”

“You know, now that busy season is over, the world is not going to end if you take a sick day,” Yves tells him. “Even if you do like, twice the amount of work as everyone else on the team, if you needed to call out, I’m sure something could be arranged.”

Vincent smiles at him, a little wryly. “I must look pretty bad if you’re saying this to me.”

“Yes, I was lying,” Yves says. “Clearly, you look terrible.”

It isn’t true at all—even here, even like this, Vincent doesn’t look terrible, not even in the least. But Vincent still smiles, at this—a tired smile.

The elevator doors slide open.

“Text me if you need anything,” Yves says, impulsively. “Seriously. Tissues, soup, medicine—whatever. It’s not far of a drive.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” Vincent says. “I will see you tomorrow.” And then he steps out of the elevator, and Yves is left with an inexplicable sinking feeling in his stomach. As far as he knows, it has no place there. Obviously, Vincent can take care of himself. Obviously, Vincent can handle a cold. Yves has nothing to be concerned about.

—

The next day is rainy—a constant, torrential downpour, which makes his commute to work take almost twice as long as it usually does. It wouldn’t be spring here, Yves supposes, without dreary weather like this.

Back in uni, when he rowed crew, they’d practice out for hours out in the rain. Now that he spends the majority of his day inside, he supposes he can’t complain. The shelter of the office building is a reprieve.

Vincent doesn’t show up.

“I think he’s out sick,” Cara says, when Yves asks. “You know, it’s funny. I don’t think I’ve actually seen him take a sick day before.”

“For how hard he works, he definitely deserves one,” Garrett says.

“He seemed fine yesterday, when I saw him,” Cara says, with a shrug. “Probably came on quickly.” Yves nods.

But that isn’t quite right, is it? Vincent hadn’t seemed fine, had he? Yves thinks back to the things he’d noticed—Vincent, uncharacteristically exhausted during the meeting, though it was clear he’d been just as engaged as usual. Vincent, shivering in the elevator, telling Yves to keep his distance. How poorly had he been feeling already, yesterday? How poorly does he have to be feeling today to have called off of work for it?

He finds some time just before lunch to text.

Y: how are you holding up? Y: yesterday’s offer stands if you need me to bring you anything!

He doesn’t get a response from Vincent, which is a little concerning. He checks his phone halfway through lunch, and then twice more, in between his afternoon meetings, just in case he’s missed a notification.

“Are you expecting a text from someone?” Cara says, looking a little curious.

“Just a friend,” Yves says, which is and isn’t true.

To make a point—to Cara, and possibly to himself—he shuts his phone off. He very pointedly does not look at it again for the remainder of the hour.

It’s not until mid-afternoon that he finally gets a response.

V: Sorry to get back to you so late.

Yves sits upright, fumbling with his phone to get it unlocked. The text bubble pops up again, somewhat intermittently, to show that Vincent is typing.

V: If it’s not too much trouble, there’s a blue folder on my desk labeled 2-A.

Yves blinks at this, a little disbelieving.

Y: you’re asking me to bring you work files? Y: arent you supposed to be resting 🤨 Y: paid sick leave, remember? as in, leave your work at work??

V: I meant to pack them yesterday.

Y: that’s like a genie grants you 3 wishes and you ask for an extra day of assignments Y: terrible waste of a wish if you ask me

V: As a genie, you’re quite judgmental

Y: ok ok Y: as your loyal lamp dweller i’ll be over around 8pm with folder 2-A Y: you need anything else?

V: Nothing else V: You can just leave them outside my door

A beat. Then Vincent sends:

V: Sorry to trouble you

Yves thinks of twenty responses he wants to send to that text. Then, thinking better of himself, he shuts his phone off and gets back to work.

—

It’s a little past seven when he finally checks out of the office.

Outside, the rain hasn’t even begun to let up—it falls, straight and heavy, in large, globular droplets. The streets gleam with water. Yves leaves his umbrella in the trunk, tunes out everything but the static of the rainfall, and drives.

Yves has only ever been to Vincent’s apartment once—to pick him up for the New Years’ party Margot hosted—and even then, Vincent had met him at the door. But he recognizes the unit, nonetheless.

For a moment, he considers leaving the folder of files outside of Vincent’s door and taking his leave.

But it’s windy, and he’s afraid the papers might fly away, torn up by the biting wind, and get lost face down in a puddle somewhere, which would defeat the purpose of him coming here in the first place, and would probably also breach some employee confidentiality policy. So instead, he knocks.

It’s silent for a moment. Rain beats down on the slanted rooftops, a constant thrum.

Yves is about to reach out to knock again, when the door swings open.

There stands Vincent, in a pale blue hoodie and loose-fitting pajama pants, with neat rectangular cuffs.

He looks tired. It’s the first thing Yves registers—the unusual fatigue to his expression, which he can’t quite seem to blink away; the flush high on his cheekbones. The way he holds himself, his shoulders stiff, carefully, defensively; as if despite his exhaustion, there’s a part of him which wishes to appear presentable still.

It’s only a moment later that he’s taking a halting step back, ducking into a hoodie sleeve. Yves catches the shiver of his expression, his eyebrows pulling together, before it crumples, and his head jerks forward with a harsh—

“hHihh’GKkTT—! Hh-!! iHH-’DZZSCHh-uuUh!”

The second sneeze sounds louder and harsher than usual, even muffled into the fabric of his sleeve. It betrays his congestion all at once.

“Bless you,” Yves says.

Vincent emerges, sniffling a little. When he speaks, he sounds a little hoarser than he did yesterday. “I thought I said you - snf-! - could leave them on the front step.”

“You did,” Yves says, glancing down at the folder in his hands. “But it’s windy, and it’s raining. I figured you’d prefer to have your files intact. How are you feeling?”

Vincent blinks at him. He’s leaning heavily against the doorframe, Yves realizes, one hand gripped tightly around the frame, his knuckles white from the pressure, as if it would take him too much effort to stay upright otherwise.

“Alright,” he answers. “Thanks for making the trip here. I… it must’ve taken longer, in the rain.” He squeezes his eyes shut, as if his head hurts, as if the light coming from outside is exacerbating his headache. “If you ever need me to pick something up for you, I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Yves says. Despite himself, he reaches up to press his hand against Vincent’s forehead.

The heat under his fingertips is alarming, to say the least. Yves blinks, lowering his hand, and tries to keep the worry out of his voice. “Have you taken your temperature?”

Vincent shakes his head. “I don’t think I have a thermometer.”

“Have you eaten, then?”

Vincent averts his glance, looking sheepish. “I… was planning to stop for groceries, yesterday,” he says. Planning to.

Yves thinks back to the elevator ride yesterday. Vincent had probably already been feeling very unwell, then. And yet, he’d talked with Yves as if nothing was out of the ordinary. I’m feeling a little off, he’d said, as if anything about his current affliction could possibly be characterized as “little.” I will see you tomorrow—as if he had really, genuinely been intending on showing up at work.

“So I take it that there’s nothing in the fridge, either,” Yves says.

“If it’s any consolation, you’ll be pleased to know that I slept,” Vincent says, in lieu of answering.

Then he shivers—the sort of concerning, full-body shiver that is a little concerning, coming from someone who is usually unaffected by the cold—and Yves is immediately reminded that the door they’re speaking through is open.

“Can I come in?” he asks.

“You probably shouldn’t,” Vincent says, before his expression scrunches up, and he’s ducking away with a— “hh—! hHih-II—TSSCHHh-UH! snf-!”, smothered hurriedly into the palm of his hand. He sniffles, emerging with a slight wince. “This came on pretty quickly. It might be the flu.”

“It’s fine,” Yves says. “I got my flu shot in the winter. And anyways, I’ll be careful.”

Vincent is quiet, for a moment. Then, frowning, he says, “I’d feel terrible if you caught this.”

That’s the least of Yves’s worries—he doubts he’s going to catch this. Even if he does, it will just mean a few days off of work. Not the end of the world, by any means. Nothing to warrant the expression on Vincent’s face—Vincent looks upset, as if he’ll really can’t think of anything worse than Yves catching this. Like even the thought of it is worth being upset over.

Yves shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, seriously.” He pushes past Vincent to step inside and shuts the door behind him. “Here, I’ll set these down on your desk. Where is it?”

“Down the hallway, to the left,” Vincent says.

Yves takes the folder, leaves his shoes at the door, and heads inside.

Vincent’s bedroom is small and organized—it’s the kind of bedroom that’s tastefully minimal, in the sort of unified manner that implies that everything in it has been carefully arranged. There’s a small white desk in the corner, a stack of files arranged neatly next to Vincent’s laptop, its lid halfway to shut. There’s a bookshelf, leaned up against the wall far; the bottom shelf looks to be filled with textbooks; the top shelf lined with books, both in Korean and in English. The walls are painted slate gray, the carpets lining the floorboards picked out to match, and there are pale blue curtains hanging from the windows, pulled tightly shut.

There are signs here, too, of his illness, but they are subtle. A tissue box, nestled between his pillow and the headboard, half empty. A waste bin at the foot of the bed, conveniently in reach. A small bottle of aspirin on the bedside counter; an empty packet of cough drops sitting at the edge of his nightstand.

Yves sets the folder at the end of Vincent’s desk, next to the rest of his files, and turns to face him.

“You’re not going to work on these until you’re feeling better, right?” he asks.

“Only if I can’t sleep,” Vincent says, which Yves supposes is a satisfactory answer. Then he twists away, his eyebrows furrowing, lifting a loosely clenched fist to his face to cough, and cough.

The cough is harsh and grating—his entire frame shudders with the force of it, his breaths shallow and raspy. He really sounds awful. This must have come on quickly, Yves thinks.

If it’s upsetting, seeing Vincent like this, it’s even worse to be standing here, in his room, doing nothing. So—if only to make himself useful, if only to convince himself that there’s something he can do—Yves ducks out into the kitchen.

The pantry is meticulously organized—glasses lined up in neat rows; stacks of bowls sorted by size. He fills a glass with water, shuts the cabinets, and takes it back to the bedroom.

By the time he gets back, Vincent is sitting at the edge of his bed. His glasses are folded neatly, left at the very edge of the countertop.

“Here,” Yves says, crossing the room, holding out the glass for him to take.

“Thanks,” Vincent says, taking it gingerly from him. He takes a small, tentative sip, and then another—his hands are a little shaky, Yves notices. “You - snf-! - should really go.”

“I’m not entirely convinced you’ll be fine on your own,” Yves says.

“Of course I will be,” Vincent says, with all of his usual certainty. He lays down, pulling the covers over his body. “I have been fine on my own for years.”

It’s meant to be reassuring, Yves supposes. But he doesn’t feel reassured in the least.

“Thank you again for bringing me the files,” Vincent says, at last, shutting his eyes.

“You could’ve asked me to get you groceries,” Yves says. “There’s a supermarket not far from here, right? And you’re out of cough drops.” He takes a few steps over, towards the desk in the corner of the room. “These—” He examines the bottle of ibuprofen on the table. “—are expired.”

“Just because you’ve extended this kindness to me,” Vincent tells him, “doesn’t mean I should take advantage of it.”

Yves blinks, a little taken aback. “It’s only groceries. I wouldn’t have minded, really.”

“See,” Vincent says, with a note of—something in his voice. It sounds a bit like resignation. “That’s just the kind of person you are.”

Yves doesn’t know what to say, to that.

Before he can think up a fitting response, Vincent’s breathing evens out. Yves lets himself listen to the shallow, steady cadence of it. Lets himself acknowledge the heavy, painful feeling in his chest for just a moment. Then he shuts the lights off and heads back out into the hallway.

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sneezedarling · 1 year ago

Text

The Worst Timing | [3/?]

part 3 (6k words)!! you can read [part 1] here! (it gets worse before it gets better). this chapter is more character-centric (sorry again 🙇‍♀️). i wanted to post this before work eats me alive this week T.T

this is an OC fic - here is a list of everything I've written w these two!

Summary: Yves invites Vincent to a wedding, in France, where the rest of his family will be in attendance. It's a very important wedding, so he's definitely not going to let anything—much less the flu—ruin it. (ft. fake dating, an international trip, downplaying illness, sharing a hotel room)

—

It’s fine, until it isn’t.

—

Yves gets home, showers first (only after Vincent insists that he shower first), heads out into the living room, and shuts off the lights. The lights in the bedroom are still on, bleeding in from the doorframe.

His head hurts. Every part of him feels cold. He burrows deep into the covers on the pullout bed, rearranges himself until he finds a sufficiently comfortable position, and shuts his eyes.

Tomorrow, he’ll be away for most of the afternoon—with the wedding rehearsal, and then the rehearsal dinner with the rest of his family—and Vincent will grab dinner and drinks with some of Genevieve’s friends in the meantime. Yves will probably be home late. They won’t see each other for the entire day—at least, until he gets back from dinner some time in the late evening.

Everything for the wedding is ready. His suit jacket is ironed, his shoes polished; his speech has been written for weeks and rehearsed first alone, and then in front of Leon and Victoire, who’d told him how to make it funnier (Leon) and more concise (Victoire). Two days from today, Aimee and Genevieve will be married.

All he has to do, now, is just see it through.

—

Yves wakes up coughing.

He feels distinctly wrong. His head is throbbing. His limbs feel strangely leaden, like they’re weighing him down, like it’d be a considerable inconvenience to move them—he isn’t sure if he’d be able to sit up properly.

He presses a hand to his forehead, in an attempt to gauge whether he’s running a fever. It’s no use—his hand is warm and clammy. He can’t tell.

Fuck. This is not good.

One wrong breath leaves him coughing, harshly enough that the coughs seem to reverberate through his frame. His throat burns. He reaches blindly through the dark in an attempt to find one of the waters he’d bought yesterday night, at the convenience store. Had he left a bottle on the nightstand? Or had he gotten rid of the one he’d drunk from last night? His breath hitches, so sharply that he has practically no hope of holding back.

“Hhehh’YISHh-CHHiew! hhHEHH’iIDTSSHh-iiEW!”

The sneezes tear through him with little warning, leaving him flushed and shivering. It’s not warm enough in the living room. He doesn’t know if it’s the air conditioning in the room, or the relative thinness of the blanket he’s under, or if perhaps the window is open just a crack, or if perhaps he just hasn’t been moving enough to get warm. He’s not sure he could pinpoint the cause if he tried.

The only thing that seems evident to him, now, is that he feels immediately, uncomfortably cold. He could get out of bed and look for something to wear—he hadn’t packed any thick jackets, because Provence in March isn’t especially cold, but even one of the dress jackets would be better than nothing, so long as it’s one of the ones which can withstand getting a little wrinkled.

But when he sits up—or, rather, when he attempts to sit up—he feels the world tilt, uncomfortably. He braces himself on the frame of the couch, propping himself up with one arm up on the armrest.

He definitely has a fever, even if there’s no way for him to verify that right now. Otherwise, it would be strange for him to feel so cold. Even now, only half-vertical, he finds himself shivering so hard he can barely move the blanket back up to sit comfortably around his shoulders.

One wrong breath sends a painful twinge down his throat, and he finds himself coughing, gripping the armrest tightly to keep himself upright. He should get out of bed. He should find water, put on a jacket, make an attempt to get back to sleep.

For now, all he can do is muffle the coughs as best he can into a cupped hand. His chest aches with every cough. Every breath he takes in feels like it only manages to irritate his lungs further.

Through the haze of his exhaustion, he thinks he hears footsteps. The knowledge that he’s keeping Vincent up is the last thing he needs, right now.

Through the crack under the doorframe, he can see the line of light from the hallway, which is lit even at night. Maybe if he’s going to be up anyways, he should spend the night out in the hallway—at the very least, he’ll be a little quieter out there.

Someone presses a bottle of water into his hands.

“Drink,” Vincent says. “It’s uncapped.”

Yves brings the water to his lips and takes a short, tentative sip, and then another. His throat is sorer than it had been yesterday—the water burns against the back of his throat as he swallows.

Vincent steps past him, past the edge of the couch, to do—something. Yves doesn’t know what. He hears a click, and the lamp on the cabinet by the sofa flickers on, floods the living room with dim yellow light. Vincent regards him carefully, his expression unreadable.

“Sorry,” Yves says. The next breath he takes in exacerbates the tickle at the back of his throat, and he twists away, muffling cough after cough into a tightly cupped hand. “I didn’t mbean to wake you.”

Vincent’s eyebrows furrow. He looks… upset, somehow, though the light is dim enough that his expression is hard to make out. Yves tries to think of what else he should say, but his head feels heavy.

He tries to re-cap the bottle of water, though his hands are shaky enough to make it a little difficult. Vincent takes the bottle from him and screws the cap tight in one fluid motion. Yves tries and fails to think of something to joke about.

Vincent presses a hand to his forehead. His hand is comfortingly warm, and a little calloused. It’s strange, how good it feels to be touched—he knows and knows well that it means nothing, but the gentle press of Vincent’s fingers to his skin—when he’s spent the past few days trying to keep his distance from everyone—is strangely comforting. Yves leans into the contact, despite all logic.

Vincent pulls away, too soon. “You’re—”

“Warm?” Yves finishes for him.

“Feverish,” Vincent clarifies, with a frown. “Did you already know that?”

“I had a hunch,” Yves answers, honestly.

Vincent just stares at him, for a moment, frustration evident in the set of his jaw. Yves repositions the blankets over his shoulders, a little self-conscious. “It’s fide. I’ll take something for it,” Yves says. “You should go back to sleep.”

“We slept early,” Vincent says. “I’m not tired.”

“What time is it?”

Vincent glances at his watch. “5:34.”

“That’s still early enough that you should be asleep.” Yves sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. His head hurts, and there’s a prickle in his nose again. “Sorry. I can be quieter.”

His breath hitches. In a frantic attempt to keep his promise, he lifts the blanket to his face and stifles—or, rather, attempts to stifle—the sneeze into the fabric.

“hh—! hhEHH’NGKTSHCH-iiew!”

It’s still not very quiet, despite his best efforts, and the attempt to stifle leaves him coughing a little. It’s a good thing they’re not sharing a bed, he thinks. He hasn’t exactly been careful about keeping this illness to himself.

“Bless you,” Vincent says, rising to his feet. He ducks into the bedroom, only to be back a moment later with a box of tissues, which he tucks into the crook between the pullout bed and the sofa armrests, conveniently in reach. “Was it like this last night?”

“What?”

“Were you unable to sleep last night?”

It’s not an accusation, but Yves freezes at the question, nonetheless. For a moment, he worries—that Vincent knows precisely how little sleep he’s gotten since they landed in France. That Vincent was awake last night—or worse, that Yves was the one who kept him up—which is why he’s asking this question now.

But if he knew, wouldn’t he have said something about it yesterday?

“I slept fine,” Yves says.

There’s a cold breeze coming in from somewhere—from the hallway, or from one of the air conditioning vents, he can’t say. Yves tries his best to suppress a shiver. He can tell, by the change to Vincent’s expression—the way Vincent’s eyes linger on him a little too long—that he doesn’t do it well enough.

“You should really have taken the bed,” Vincent says, with a sigh. “It’s warmer.”

“It’s warm here too,” Yves says. There probably wouldn’t even be a problem if he weren’t feverish—it’s just the relative temperature difference that’s making him shiver. “Are you goidg to stop interrogating me ndow?”

“If you stop giving me reasons to be worried,” Vincent says plainly, “Then I will.”

Yves sighs. He’s cold, and exhausted, and he wants this argument to be over. He doesn’t want to have to justify all of this to Vincent, who should be enjoying this vacation instead of worrying about Yves and whatever cold-slash-flu he’s managed to pick up this time. “This is not the first time I’ve been under the weather,” he says. “I—” he veers away to face the opposite direction from Vincent, pulls the blanket up to cover his face. “hHeh-!-hHEHh‘nGKTTSHH-iiIEw!”

“Bless you.”

“—I kdow what I’m doing, snf. I don't even feel that—hh… hHheh'iiDDZZCHH-iIIEW!” The sneeze comes on too quickly for him to stifle. “—that udwell,” he finishes, sniffling, though that’s not entirely truthful. He lifts an elbow to muffle a few coughs into it, blinking through the tears that are surfacing, irritatingly, in his vision.

“So you’ve said,” Vincent says.

“Yes,” Yves says. “You can trust me on this.”

Vincent looks at him for a moment. For a moment, Yves waits for him to refute this, waits for him to point out just how unprepared he is, just how little of a plan he has aside from sticking this out until he has the chance to crash and burn.

“What do you need?” he says, instead.

Yves blinks at him. It’s not the question he expects Vincent to ask.

“Nothidg,” he says, honestly. “Seriously. It’s just a cold. I’ll take somethidg for it when I wake up.”

“Cold medicine?” To Yves’s nod, Vincent says, “I can get it for you, if you want.”

“No need. I’ll probably just — hhEhh-! HhEHh’IITShh-iiEW! Ugh… I’ll pick somethidg up from the codvenience store on the way to breakfast.”

Vincent turns aside to muffle a yawn into a cupped hand. Yves is unpleasantly reminded that he’s probably the sole reason why Vincent is awake right now.

“You should sleep, seriously,” Yves says, insistent. “Maybe you’ll be able to squeeze in a few more hours of sleep before sunrise. I’ll be okay.”

Vincent blinks at him. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Vincent says, softly.

Then he stands, sets the bottle of water on the cabinet by the sofa, switches off the lamp, and heads back into the bedroom. Yves listens as his footsteps recede. His sinuses are starting to feel like they’re slightly waterlogged, and the pressure from behind his eyelids is back, throbbing.

The tickle in his nose heightens, momentarily, and he finds himself muffling another set of sneezes into the bedsheets. He desperately hopes it’s quiet enough to not be disruptive. It’s hard to be fully quiet when whatever he has leaves him sneezing so forcefully, but he’s determined to try.

The coughing fit that follows leaves his throat feeling like it’s been nearly scraped raw. He clears his throat quietly, though that hurts, too. He takes another small sip of the water, though it goes down his throat with such difficulty he finds himself coughing again.

Two more days. He just has to make it through. He’ll grab a pack of cold and flu medication from the convenience store downstairs—the kind that’s supposed to smother all the symptoms—and then he’ll be good as new, he’s sure.

Yves shuts his eyes, turns to the side, and tries his best to get comfortable. He’ll be less disruptive if he’s asleep. It’s just getting there that’s the problem. He’s exhausted—that fact only seems to become more evident the longer he stays awake—but every time he finds himself drifting off, he’s jolted awake by another untimely sneeze which wrenches him back into consciousness.

In college, whenever he was up unreasonably late for some reason, Erika used to tell him to Stop worrying, Yves, I can hear you overthinking from the other side of the room. Ask anyone else and they’d say that Yves has his life reasonably put together—being the eldest of three does that to you. He’d spent his formative years growing up trying to be the sort of person Leon and Victoire could lean on—the kind of person impervious to the sorts of stressful situations he’d gotten regularly thrown into—and for the most part, it’d worked.

He’d learned, early on, that it is not really that difficult to keep things from people. He likes to think of himself as reliable, even if that means that whenever something does come up—something that feels frustrating and insurmountable—it doesn’t really hurt any less when he goes through it privately.

Erika had always been good at seeing through his bullshit. It was one of the things he liked about her—that he could lean on her if he needed to, without worrying that it’d take its toll on her. That she’d take a look at his problems, which always felt so all-consuming in the moment, and make them seem simple and solvable and almost trivial.

It’s hard not to miss her, now, when he’s alone in the dark, devoid of any and all distractions. Or maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was just having someone he didn’t have to hide from.

Yves wonders, faintly, what Vincent would’ve said if he were more honest with him. He and Vincent aren’t actually dating, but he thinks maybe Vincent would understand. He thinks that they’ve been getting along well, as of late—he might even consider them friends.

But then again, hasn’t Vincent agreed to do all of this—lying to Yves’s friends and family, falsifying their relationship, letting Yves drag him from one celebration to the next—because it’s easy? Because he is willing to tolerate going to a party, or a housewarming, or a wedding, where there are no strings attached, when after the night is over he can drop the act cleanly?

It’s a lie that they’re telling, but it’s a self contained one. The moment they step foot out of whatever event they’re attending, there’s nothing left to pretend. Yves can go back to living his own life, and Vincent can go back to living his. Would Vincent really have agreed to do any of this if that weren’t the case?

It’s going to be fine, Erika would have said. Just breathe. She’s not around to tell him this, now, but he still tries.

The medicine will be enough to get him through today, and the day after. It has to be.

—

When Yves falls asleep, it’s the kind of restless sleep that sits somewhere in between unconsciousness and wakefulness. He dreams in fragments of scenes—him at Aimee and Genevieve’s wedding, the details hazy and illogical and unusually bright, the weddings he’d been to in the past all superimposed into one.

When he wakes up to the sound of his alarm, it’s to a pounding headache and what he’s certain must be a fever. He can’t seem to stop shivering. It’s already bright out—the curtains in the bedroom are pulled shut, but light streams in from the sliver of space between them.

He feels too cold and somehow entirely devoid of energy, though he doesn’t remember doing anything particularly tiring. Sitting up makes the throbbing pain in his head sharpen, so painfully that he has to grip the side of the couch to steady himself, blinking against the dizziness. If Aimee saw him right now, he thinks, she’d send him straight home—he’s in no state to attend a wedding, and he’s not sure if he’s in any state to pretend that’s not the case.

He breath hitches. He raises an arm to shield his face, habitually, even though there’s no one here to witness—

“hhEhh-’iZZSSHH’Iew!” The singular sneeze is, unfortunately, far from relieving. The tickle in his nose is irritatingly persistent, even when he reaches up to rub his nose, which is starting to run. “Hh-! hhEH-!! HEHh-’IDDZSCHh-yYew! hHEHH’iDDSCHh-iEWW!hhEhH-! H‘IIDzZCH-YIIIEEew! Ugh…” The sneezes scrape unpleasant against his already-sore throat, leaving him hunched over as he muffles cough after cough into his arm.

There’s a small packet of cold medicine on his bedside, along with an uncapped bottle of water, and Vincent is nowhere to be found. The medication is a relief. It’s strangely thoughtful—a part of him is a little worried that Vincent’s only gotten this for him out of a sense of obligation—but he’s grateful for it, nonetheless.

It’s exactly what he needs. Surely if he takes something for this, his symptoms will be, at the very least, tolerable enough for him to function as usual.

He picks up the packet, squints down at the instructions. The text is inconveniently small, and he’s always been better at speaking French than he is at reading it, but he gets it eventually. It’s supposed to last six hours. If he times this right, he can take a dose that will last him until the end of the rehearsal dinner tonight, and then—if he’s not feeling better by tomorrow—take another before the wedding starts.

It will be fine. He uncaps the bottle by the cabinet, downs two pills, squeezes his eyes shut, and sits there for a minute, forces himself to breathe, waits for the uncomfortable pressure in his temples to subside.

Then he shoots off a quick text—

Y: thanks for the cold meds :)

Y: sorry i essentially left you with some strangers (again)

Y: this seems to be a theme for me huh

Vincent texts him back just a few minutes later:

V: No problem. I hope you feel better soon

V: Leon and Victoire invited me out for lunch

Yves blinks. That’s a little surprising. But come to think about it, Vincent’s plans with Genevieve’s friends aren’t until dinner time, so it makes sense that he’s out doing something else.

His second thought is: he is definitely in for an earful from both Leon and Victoire.

Y: jealous! have fun!

His phone buzzes not long later with Vincent’s response.

V: I considered waking you, but I figured you could use the sleep

V: Do you want me to bring anything back?

Sure enough, when he checks his unread texts, Leon has texted him, are u alive????? And then, a few minutes later, ur sick? dude worst fucking timing ever 😦, to which Yves types back, thanks for your glowing reassurance

Victoire has sent him, vincent told me you’re sick :((( and, feel better soon (preferably before 3pm tomorrow!!), to which Yves says, thanks, fwding this to my body. hope it gets the message ✌️

Then he sends back to Vincent:

Y: i’m good, but thanks for asking! enjoy lunch

Vincent doesn’t say anything, to that, which means that he’s probably busy. Yves makes a note to thank him in person later. And again, much later—when all of this is over.

He just has to get the next day and a half to go according to plan.

—

The wedding rehearsal is mercifully uneventful. They walk twice through the processional, and then twice through the recessional. Yves picks a seat near one of the back rows, shivers through thirty minutes of run throughs, and tries to cough as discreetly as he can. He stifles every sneeze into a vague approximation of silence—he’s never been good at stifling—and does his best to ignore the mounting congestion in his sinuses, the persistent ache behind his temples.

It's easy enough to ignore all of those things in his excitement. He’s happy to be back—here, in France, surrounded by his whole extended family A part of this still feels unreal to him. He’s really here, in a place that feels familiar and simultaneously so novel, to watch someone who’s influenced him so fundamentally get married.

They’re all dressed for the spring weather. For the wedding rehearsal, Yves picked out a gray blazer over a dress shirt, chinos, and dress shoes. It’s not quite as formal as what he’s planning to wear tomorrow—the shoes are the only item he’s planning to rewear—but he finds himself distinctly grateful for the blazer jacket when the wind threads through the trees, knocking his tie slightly out of alignment.

It’s not unusually cold out—this would probably be considered temperate weather here, in March—but the wind is cold enough to offset the otherwise agreeable temperature.

The cold medicine helps, too—it keeps him feeling well enough to stay upright, which is already an accomplishment. He’s congested—his sinuses hurt a little, like everything’s a little waterlogged—but at least he isn’t sneezing as much as he was last night. His head still feels heavy, but the pain is a little duller, a little more muted; he’s tired, but he thinks right now he could stay awake on pure adrenaline alone.

“Dude, you sound awful,” Leon says, after the rehearsal ends.

“Thadks,” Yves says, muffling a fit of coughs into his elbow. “You always kdow just how to flatter me.”

Leon looks him over with a frown. “Are you sure you’re good for tomorrow?”

Yves doesn’t know. “Let’s hope so,” he says. “I don’t have any contingedcy plans for if I’m not.”

“I’m sure Aimee would understand if you told her.”

“I’m sure she would.” Yves looks over to where Aimee’s standing—she’s in the middle of a conversation with Yves’s parents and some of the adults on Genevieve’s side of the family. He’s too far to make out what she’s talking about, but she looks happy—she’s gesturing animatedly, her eyes bright. Every so often, he sees her flash a smile at Genevieve, as if to make sure Genevieve is following along.

Leon seems to understand that Yves has no intention of telling either of them, because he sighs. Yves changes the subject before he can say anything. “How was ludch with Vincent?”

“I like him,” Leon says, brightening at the question. “He’s surprisingly pretty funny. I hope you guys stay together.”

“Just because he’s funny?”

“That certainly doesn’t hurt,” Leon says, grinning. “But you work with him, right? If he’s a nice person while he’s looking at like, tax forms, or whatever, he’s probably a great person when he’s doing anything else.”

“Yves! Leon!” someone waves them over. When Yves turns, he sees it’s Roy, one of his younger cousins from his dad’s side of the family. “Pictures!”

“Coming,” Leon shouts back.

Yves has no idea why there are pictures happening today when the wedding is tomorrow, but he fixes his tie hastily and heads over to join them both.

—

When dinner rolls around, Yves finds he has no appetite, but he eats what he can and spends the rest of the time making conversation with some of his aunts and uncles. He’s always found this kind of small talk to be more enjoyable than it is tedious. They ask about his job, about his workload, about life in the states, about his parents, about Vincent—all things that he knows intimately, and has no problem speaking on. He thinks that speaking in French makes him a little more deliberate with his answers, partially because he has to spend some time formulating the sentences when they get more complicated, and he likes that, too. It has all the camaraderie of a family gathering—warm and crowded, welcoming, a little chaotic.

He finds Genevieve after dinner, sitting out on the steps.

“Hey,” he says, in French. She looks up, and he motions to the steps beside her. “Do you want some time alone before you get swamped with codgratulations tomorrow, or can I crash your alone time early?”

She smiles up at him. “You can sit here,” she says.

He takes a seat on the steps—a few feet away from her, because he doesn’t want to risk passing whatever he has onto her. He doesn’t know Genevieve very well. He knows her best through Aimee—through the stories Aimee has told about her, through the way Aimee’s entire disposition seems to change around her—but he’s exchanged very few words with her outside of that, all over the summer during their yearly family reunions in France. His extended family is large enough and the family reunions hectic enough that he can probably count the number of conversations he’s had with her in person on one hand.

“So,” he says. “How are you feelidg before the big day?”

“Do you want the good answer, or the honest answer?”

“The honest one,” Yves says. “hit me with it.”

For a moment, Genevieve doesn’t say anything. Yves zips his jacket up a little higher, just to have something to do. Genevieve pulls her legs in towards her chest.

“I’m terrified,” she says.

“You think somethidg might go wrong?” Yves asks, surprised. “You guys have planned this all out so thoroughly.”

“It’s not that,” she says. “It’s more like—this is probably going to be one of the most important things I’ve ever done,” she says. “You know, when something is really important to you, so it’s just that much more crucial that you don’t mess it up?”

“You’re the bride,” Yves says, clearing his throat. “I don’t think you can mess up. Unless you like, hheh-! hHheh… HEH’IIDZschH-YIEEW! snf-! Unless you get cold feet and say no when you’re supposed to be saying your vows. I wod’t forgive you if you do that, by the way.”

She laughs. “God, no. I’d never do that. It’s just—there’s all this perceived… I don’t know. Like, fragility around the moment. Like you’re just waiting for the moment to crystallize, and once it sets, it will be like that forever, so you have to make sure that it crystallizes right.”

“I’m guessing you’re ndot a fan of, like, pottery,” Yves says. He tries thinking about what other kinds of art carry the same lack of tolerance for backwards revision. “Or sculpting.”

“I haven’t tried either of those things,” she says. “Though I would probably be bad at them.”

Yves looks off into the distance, towards the countryside, the rows of verdant green hills which unfurl before them, the white cobblestone paths, the houses lining the winding roads all the way to the horizon.

“I think you don’t have to be so concerned about what it’s supposed to be,” he says. “You can give yourself permission to just—live it. Enjoy it, free of expectations. Who cares what you think about it after, right,” he says. “You’ll have a ring on your left hand. That’s good enough to offset any—well, awkwardness, or clumsiness, or anything, because as the bride, you are sort of incapable of doing anything wrong, by default.”

“I guess,” Genevieve says.

“It’d be a disservice to Aimee if you spent the wedding worrying about how to get things right idstead of like, just living,” Yves says, turning to face her. “What’s the worst that could happen? Like, you spill your drink during the wedding toast, or your mascara smears a little, or you trip on your wedding gown and you have to be helped up by the woman you love most? I think that almost makes it more romantic,” he says. “Because however the moment crystallizes, it’ll be you.”

“Did you learn all of this through pottery and sculpting?” Genevieve asks, wiping at her eyes. She looks a little better than before—she’s sitting up straighter, and the tension in her shoulders is less pronounced.

Yves grins at her. “I have a younger brother and a younger sister,” he says. He clears his throat again, though it doesn’t really do a good job at making his voice sound less hoarse. “It’s exactly as bad as you think it is. I have to be the one to talk them out of their stage fright like, all the time.”

Genevieve laughs. “It must be lively,” she says. “Your whole family is very accommodating.”

“They’re certaidly a handful,” Yves says, with a laugh that tapers off into a short cough. “I love them to death. And I’ll be happy to have you as part of them.”

She smiles at him. The evening light strikes the windblown strands of her hair gold. “Thanks for this.”

“Yeah,” he says. “No problem.”

They sit for awhile in silence. Yves crosses his arms in an attempt to conserve warmth and tries his best not to shiver too visibly.

“How did you kdow it was her?” he asks—a sudden, impulsive question.

As soon as he says it, he feels the urge to take it back. Genevieve is already stressed out enough about the wedding without him asking her difficult, abstract questions the day before the ceremony. He opens his mouth to apologize.

“There was never any doubt,” she says.

When he looks over at her, her expression looks a little wistful.

“Like, one day I woke up and I realized that whatever future I imagined for myself—in Marseille, or elsewhere; as a copywriter, or a journalist, or a director, or something entirely different—she would always be there.” Yves understands that—back when he’d been dating Erika, he’d felt like that too. That she was going to be the last person he’d ever date. That there was no conceivable future for him that didn’t involve her.

“Those kinds of revelations would come at the most insignificant of times,” Genevieve says. “I’d look over her halfway through morning coffee, or I’d watch her pick groceries from the aisle, or I’d watch her fiddle with the radio as she drove, and then it would strike me.”

“That you wanted to be with her?”

“That I was happy.” Genevieve tilts her head back to face the setting sun. “I’m really happy. It sounds like such a simple thing, and it is, but even a few years ago I’m not sure if I could’ve told you that that was true. And I think that finding someone who makes you feel that way—like they’d guard your happiness under any circumstance—is really something special.”

“You were the one who proposed to her,” he says. He remembers Aimee texting him about it, the night after it’d happened, remembers how he’d excused himself from dinner somewhere or other, ducked out of the room to get on call with her. She’d sobbed recounting it, the engagement ring on her finger.

“I was,” Genevieve says. She smiles. “I knew that if I gave up this chance I’d be kicking myself for it for the rest of my life.”

—

When he gets back from dinner at last, it’s late.

The cold/flu medicine he took from earlier is starting to wear off. His whole body aches—spending the evening outside in the cold probably didn’t help with that—and even in the relative warmth of the hotel room, he finds that he can’t stop himself from shivering.

He takes a hot shower, which feels pleasantly indulgent in the moment, but not long after he shuts off the water, he finds himself shivering again. The absence of the hot water makes him a little dizzy—he finds himself gripping the tiled wall, pausing for a moment behind the shower curtain to catch his balance.

His head really hurts. It’s the kind of sharp, throbbing pain that makes him all too aware of his heartbeat. He gets changed, towels his hair dry, and steps out of the bathroom.

Vincent is sitting on the bed, reading something. He must’ve gotten back at some point while Yves was showering. At the sound of the door, he puts the book down and looks up.

“How was the wedding rehearsal?” he asks.

“Great,” Yves says. He clears his throat, but clearing his throat irritates his throat enough that he has to muffle a few coughs into his elbow. “How was dinner with Genevieve’s friends?”

“They were very nice,” Vincent says.

“Ndicer than my friends in New York?”

“I felt less like I was being evaluated,” Vincent says, with a smile. “But if they were to express their disapproval of me in French, I would be none the wiser.”

Yves laughs. “I’mb sure that even if you learned the ladguage in full, you wouldn’t hear any disapproval from them.” He takes a seat on the couch, if only because he can’t quite trust his legs to keep him upright for the entire course of the conversation. “What did you guys talk about?”

“Lots of things. Life in France,” he says. “Life in the states. Individual freedom and the formal institution of marriage.”

“Do you believe in mbarriage?”

Vincent looks at him. “I think I believe in it just as much as everyone else does,” he says. Then, after a moment: “It worked out for my parents.”

“The busidess competition proved to be a good edough reason?”

Vincent traces a finger down the spine of the book, over the gold lettering. His shoulders settle. “They weren’t in love when they got married,” he says. Hearing him state it so plainly comes as a surprise to Yves. “Strictly speaking, I’m not sure if they ever were in love. But I think they came to love each other eventually.”

“What about you?” Yves asks. “Do you think you’ll fall in love someday?”

“Is that really something I’d choose?” Vincent says. “It either happens or it doesn’t.”

“Sure, but there are plenty of ways you can seek out love actively.”

“If I found something worth pursuing, I’d go after it,” Vincent says.

Yves laughs. “That’s very like you.” he wonders what kind of person Vincent might be drawn to enough to see as worth pursuing. Wonders if, after all of this is over, he’ll even be in Vincent’s life for long enough to know.

His head hurts. The slight prickle of irritation in his sinuses is already tiringly familiar.

“hHEh… HeHh’IIDZSCH-yyiEW!” The sneeze snaps him forward at the waist, messy and spraying. He reaches for the tissue box Vincent left him this morning, still nestled into the crook of the couch, and grabs a generous handful of tissues. “Hh… hehh-HEh-HhehHh’IIzSSCH-iEEw! Hh…. HEHh’DJSCCHh-IEew!”

The sneezes leave him coughing, afterwards. His throat feels raw and tender—he raises the tissues back up to his face to blow his nose.

“You sound worse than you did last night,” Vincent says, with a frown.

Yves opens his mouth to speak, but he finds himself coughing again. He can feel Vincent’s eyes on him. It’s embarrassing, he thinks, to be seen when he’s like this by someone who’s usually so well put together. “I’b a little prone to losidg my voice when I’m sick,” he admits. “It’s pretty incodvedient.”

“I’m probably not making it any better by talking to you,” Vincent says. That might be true—Yves is half sure that any time he does lose his voice, it’s because he typically makes no effort to converse any less than usual—but Yves likes talking to Vincent. Besides, they haven’t talked all day.

He opens his mouth to say as much, but then Vincent asks: “How are you feeling?”

“Good as new,” Yves says. When Vincent raises an eyebrow, at that, he amends: “Good enough for tomorrow, at least. The ceremony doesn’t start until three, but I’ll probably be up earlier to see if there’s anything else Aimee and Genevieve ndeed help with.”

Vincent’s eyebrows furrow. “If anything comes up, I can help.”

“It’s fine,” Yves says. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“You don’t have to ask. I’m offering.”

“I can handle it on my own. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, I— hHHEh’IDJZSCHh-yyEW! snf-! I’mb really fine. I swear.”

“Yves—”

“I’ve done this before,” he insists, which is true, too—he’s certainly been through worse. It would be wrong to put himself first, to take things easy when he might be needed still. “It doesn’t have to be your problem.”

For a moment, there’s something there, to Vincent’s expression—a flash of something that looks suspiciously close to hurt. Then it’s gone. When he blinks, Vincent’s expression is carefully neutral, as usual. He wonders if he’d imagined it.

“Okay,” he says. He sets the book gingerly on the bedside counter, and pulls the cord on the lamp. Darkness engulfs the bedroom. “You should sleep soon, if you’re able to.” A pause. The rustling of sheets. “Goodnight.” Yves wants to say something. He has a feeling that he’s messed things up, somehow, though he’s not entirely sure how.

But what can he say? He just—he just wants, desperately, for all of this to be okay. He wants the wedding to go just as planned, wants to be as present and as reliable as Aimee deserves for him to be. All of that responsibility falls on him and him alone, doesn’t it?

“Goodnight,” Yves says, instead.

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sneezedarling · 1 year ago

Text

The Worst Timing | [2/?]

happy (late) new year :') after a month (and a lot of editing and dissatisfaction), i am back with part 2 of the 'yves has had too easy of a time' series (6.4k words). you can read [part 1] here!

this is an OC fic - here is a list of everything I've written w these two!

—

When they get to the hotel Aimee’s booked for them, it’s already late enough to be dark out. Yves helps unload their suitcases from the back, while Leon loads them up onto a luggage cart.

It’s an exceptionally nice hotel—picturesque brick walls, glossy windows all in a row, slanted red rooftops rising up into the sky. He’d looked at it briefly when Aimee consulted him about the bookings, but it looks even more like a castle in person, like something straight out of a storybook. Yves will have to remember to thank Aimee and Genevieve again for picking such a nice place for them to stay at.

They check in at the lobby. Yves makes sure the suitcases make their way up to Leon and Victoire’s room, which is on his and Vincent’s floor, but at the other end of the hallway. (“Don’t be late to breakfast tomorrow,” he tells them, sternly, and Leon—who has slept through his alarms for as long as Yves has lived with him—laughs. “I’m especially talking to you,” Yves adds, looking straight at him).

Then he wheels the luggage cart down the hallway. “I’m so ready to crash,” he says, to Vincent. “It’s been a long day. Are you tired?”

“I’ll be tired once I lay down,” Vincent says. He carefully extricates one of the key cards and holds it out to the door card reader.

The interior of the hotel room is a little colder than the hallway is. Vincent flicks on the light, slips the key card back into its designated slot, and leaves his shoes in a neat line at the door. Yves follows him in.

Their room is a standard suite—there’s a small sitting area just next to the entrance, a bathroom off to the side, and a door frame—though not a proper door—which leads to the bedroom. On the far end, translucent white curtains give way to a sliding door which opens up to the balcony. It’s a nice room, Yves thinks, with a nice view of the rest of the hotel, its pool and gardens, the circular sun umbrellas stretching out floors below them. It’s only when Vincent hesitates, standing in the bedroom, that Yves realizes what’s wrong.

The bedroom has a singular queen-sized bed, and nothing else.

Of course. It makes sense for this to be the living arrangement, if they’re really dating.

“I can take the couch,” Yves says, clearing his throat, which doesn’t feel any better than it did earlier.

Vincent turns to look at him.

“I mean, this whole pretend-relationship thing doesn’t have to extend to us sharing a bed.”

Mentally, he kicks himself for not having the foresight to predict this. Just because Vincent is fine with putting on a show in front of his friends—and in this case, family—doesn’t mean that Vincent will be fine sharing a bed with him when they’re in private.

“You can have the bed,” Vincent says. “The bed will probably be warmer.”

Whether that’s a comment about how Yves has been too cold all day, or whether it’s just an offhanded appraisal which has nothing to do with him, Yves doesn’t know.

“It’s fine,” Yves says. “I don’t mind the sofa. Besides, hotels usually have extra blankets. I’m sure they’re just hidden in some drawer somewhere.”

He rummages through a few of the cabinets and looks through the closet until he finds what he’s looking for—a feather comforter, folded neatly on the top shelf. He takes it down, keeping it folded under his arm.

“See,” he says, flashing Vincent a smile. “I’ll be perfectly warm, like this.” Vincent still looks a little unconvinced. “You should wake me if you’re not,” he says. “I don’t mind switching.”

“Duly noted,” Yves says, even though he has no intention of waking Vincent for any reason.

“The couch probably extends into a pull-out bed,” Vincent says, already heading back into the living room. “It should be more comfortable. I can help you set it up.”

“I can do it,” Yves says. All this talking is not helping with his throat. Worse, somewhere over the course of the past couple hours, there’s a faint tickle that’s managed to settle into his sinuses.

“It’s the least I can do, if I’m taking the bed,” Vincent says.

Yves is about to say more, but he finds that he really needs to sneeze. He lifts his arm to his face, his eyes watering, his breath hitching—

“Hh-! hHehh’IIZSCHh-IIEW!”

“Bless you,” Vincent calls, from the next room over.

“Thanks,” Yves says, turning into his shoulder with a small cough. His breath hitches again, irritatingly. “hHeh-! HEHH’IiITSHHiEW! snf-!”

When he heads into the living room, Vincent is already almost done setting up the pull-out bed. Yves helps him lock down the legs of the frame.

“Thanks,” Yves says, fluffing out the blanket he’s holding so that he can lay it out over the mattress. “All set up.”

He looks the bed over. It looks inviting enough—a little smaller than the bed in the bedroom, the mattress thinner, but fluffy and clean regardless. Vincent steps past him to duck into the bedroom and emerges a moment later, carrying two pillows.

“Are these your pillows?” Yves says.

“They’re yours now.”

“I can sleep without pillows.”

“They gave me two sets, anyways,” Vincent says. “I wouldn’t have made use of these ones.”

“Okay.” Tentatively, Yves takes a seat at the edge of the mattress. From the doorway, he gets a limited view of the bedroom—he can see the curtains at the far end, the desk pushed up against the wall, and the very foot of the bed. “Do you think this is what couples do when they’re traveling and they get in a fight?”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Vincent asks.

“It might as well be,” Yves says.

“If your family walks in and sees that I’ve banished you to the sofa, I don’t think I’ll ever be forgiven,” Vincent says, so seriously that it almost doesn’t register as a joke. Yves laughs.

“You can just say I snore,” he says. “Or, worse. Maybe I kick you in my sleep.”

“Do you?”

Yves doesn’t—at least, he’s been told he doesn’t—but it’s of no consequence. They’re not going to be sharing a bed. “Luckily for you, you won’t have to find out.”

He gets settled—sets his suitcase out on one of the side tables, sets out all his toiletries in the bathroom, puts the clothes he’s planning to wear for tomorrow in a neat stack, and hangs up the suit he’s going to wear for the wedding in the closet. He’d been careful folding it, but he’ll probably have to give it another good iron before the wedding date. By the time he has everything accounted for, the bathroom door is closed, and the shower’s running.

The hotel has left them a couple bottles of water on the nightstand but he heads downstairs to buy a couple more from the on-site convenience store on the first floor. Victoire had them exchange dollars for euros at the airport, which Yves thinks he might have forgotten to do in their haste. Even though she’s the youngest of the three of them, sometimes he thinks she is the one with the most common sense.

He strikes up a brief conversation with the cashier, in French that he thinks is fairly fluent but probably accented—it’s been awhile since he’s gotten any practice with it. His speaking is good, but there are some colloquialisms and some idioms that he’s not familiar with and ends up having to ask about.

By the time he gets back up to the bedroom, bottled waters in hand, Vincent is done showering, his hair still a little damp.

“I got us extra waters,” Yves says. “There’s a convenience store down on the first floor.”

“Oh,” Vincent says. “Thanks. You didn’t have to.” He looks nice, even with his hair damp, even though he’s wearing just a t-shirt and shorts to sleep, Yves thinks, and then immediately tables that thought.

“It was nice to stretch my legs,” Yves says. “And nice to have a chance to practice my French. My relatives are going to be disappointed in me if I sound worse than I did last year.”

“Are you fluent?”

“Fluent enough to hold a proper conversation. Not fluent enough to not sound like a foreigner. I grew up speaking French and English, but obviously in the states, there aren’t as many opportunities to practice French.”

“I don’t think you would have lost much of it,” Vincent says, as if from experience.

Yves laughs. “For my own sake, let’s hope not.”

When he steps into the bathroom, the mirror is still fogged up from the steam. He swipes a hand over the glass to clear enough of it so that he can see.

He looks fine, still, at least outwardly—a little tired, maybe, if the dark circles under his eyes are anything to go by. There’s a faint flush to his complexion, too, which is strange, because he doesn’t feel like he has a fever. He’s just a little colder than usual, is all.

All in all, he still looks passable. At first glance, it doesn’t seem very evident that anything is wrong at all.

He takes a shower, cranks the water up until it’s almost scalding, and stands under the hot water, shutting his eyes. The warmth is a welcome change. It’s the first time today that he’s been really, properly warm—if only because he’s turned the water up a couple degrees higher than he usually has it at.

The water splashes over his shoulders. He leans his head back, taking in a deep breath of the steam.

It’s fine. It will be fine. He’ll drink tons of water, take all the vitamin C he can find, and sleep this off tonight. He’ll be good as new tomorrow.

—

When Yves blinks awake, it’s still dark out.

The first thing that registers to him is that he’s cold.

What started off as a slight headache has turned into something much worse—his head is throbbing, and even with the blanket, he’s freezing. The air conditioning in the room is on—he can hear the low hum of it through the vents—and everything feels unbearably frigid. Even the bedsheets, which are at the very least warm from his body heat, seem to always be losing heat, unpleasantly, when he shifts.

When he checks his phone, the time onscreen is 3:45 am. Too late to call the front desk and ask them to send up more blankets, probably—even if they are technically in operation, he doesn’t want to be that one asshole to ask for a favor at this time of day.

He’ll ask tomorrow, he thinks, at a more reasonable hour. It’s almost morning, anyways. Maybe if he manages to get back to sleep, he won’t feel the cold as much.

There’s a dull pressure to his sinuses, a slight tickle that seems only to sharpen as he rubs his nose. His breath catches, too quickly for him to do anything to attend to the subsequent—

“Hheh—! hHEHH’iISHHhi-iEw!”

Fuck. The sneeze is loud enough to echo a little within the confines of the living room. Vincent is in the next room over. Vincent is asleep, presumably, like Yves should be.

And Yves’s nose is starting to tickle again.

He raises the blankets to his face, presses his nose to them to muffle the next—

“hhEH— hehh’IZschhH-IIEW! snf-!”

The sound is marginally quieter this time, muffled into the cotton, but it’s far from silent. He hopes, desperately, that it’s quiet enough, or that Vincent is a heavy enough sleeper for it not to matter. There isn’t even a proper door between them.

He reaches up to swipe a hand over his eyes. How did this get so bad so quickly? His head feels heavy, and every sneeze that tears through him is harsh enough to scrape at his already-raw throat—whatever hope he’d had for sleeping it off seems to be diminishing with every passing minute.

He listens, for a moment, for anything: any shifting from the room over, any motion, any footsteps. But to his relief, there’s nothing.

His head is swimming. Worse, he still has to sneeze. The tissue box is on the nightstand in the bedroom Vincent is in, but Yves thinks that it would be too unwise to make a trip right now and risk waking Vincent up a good three hours before sunrise.

“hHh-! hhH-!...”

Fuck. He stays frozen like that, for a moment, one hand hovering over his nose and mouth. His nose tickles, badly, kept just narrowly on edge. It feels like one wrong breath would be enough to set off a sneeze, but sometimes it seems to evade him at the last second—he can’t seem to get his body to settle on something decisive. “hhHEh-!”

The sneeze is unexpected, when it comes, at last—loud and forceful and vicious.

“hehH’NGKT’shhH’EEW!”

A short burst of pain shoots through his temples. Yves can’t claim he’s ever been good at stifling, and this attempt is no exception. It’s not much quieter than the others, even muffled into his pillow, and the attempt to stifle has only made the pressure in his head feel worse.

“Hheh… hh-!” He sniffles. His eyes are watering so much he thinks they might spill over. “hHeh… hh-hHih-HEHh’DJJSHh’iEEW!”

This one he muffles into his hands, ducking forward into his chest. The relief he feels from letting out the sneeze is unfortunately short-lived. He’s nowhere close to done. He can feel it, in the tickle in his nose which refuses to let up, in the pressure to his sinuses which only seems to worsen with each sneeze.

For a moment, Yves contemplates spending the rest of the night just outside their room, out in the hallway. It will almost certainly be colder, he would be quieter there, at the very least—there would be a proper door and a wall between him and Vincent, and that’s something, isn’t it?

Before he can seriously consider it, he’s snapping forward at the waist, muffling another loud sneeze into the covers.

“hhHeh-iIDDSHHhh’YyiiEW!”

He finds himself coughing, after, muffling the coughs tightly into the feather blanket in an attempt to cough more quietly. He shivers, huddling deeper into the covers. His head is pounding. Every time he swallows, sharp, hot pain lances his throat.

He hears nothing from the room over, even when he listens carefully. This much is a relief—truthfully, he would feel awful if he were keeping Vincent up because of this. Yves has survived on less sleep—back in university, 6am crew practice meant waking up early even when he’d been up late to finish projects or coursework, or otherwise out late with friends—but the thought of keeping Vincent up makes something uncomfortable settle in his stomach. Vincent hadn’t slept at all during the flight. He must be tired, now. The last thing he needs—after the stress of being surrounded by strangers in a foreign country, after traveling for almost 10 hours straight, after being assigned to room with his coworker, of all people—is to be woken up at an ungodly hour just because Yves can’t keep this damn cold under wraps.

Yves thinks he should try to sleep too, if only because it means he won’t be awake to succumb to the next sneeze that threatens to tear through him.

But if he’s entirely honest with himself, he’s not sure if sleep is going to come to him anytime soon.

—

Yves doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he wakes up to his 7:30am alarm so tired that he feels like he hasn’t slept at all

“Morning,” Vincent says, emerging in the doorway. He’s fully dressed already, his shirt crisply ironed, the collar upright, his hair neatly styled.

“You’re fast,” Yves says. His voice sounds a little hoarse—all the sneezing last night probably hasn’t done it any favors. But if Vincent can tell that it sounds off, he doesn’t say. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Not really,” Vincent says. “We have time.”

“Give me a few minutes to get ready,” Yves says, hauling himself out of bed. “I’ll be out in five.”

He changes in record speed, washes his face, brushes his teeth, and stuffs everything he can see himself needing into a backpack to take down to breakfast.

When he emerges, Vincent is waiting for him in the hallway.

“How did you sleep?” Yves asks.

“Fine,” Vincent says. “You?”

“I slept well enough,” Yves says, before muffling a yawn into his hand. At Vincent’s pointed glance at him, he adds, “I’m just a little tired. It’s probably jetlag. It’s what, like, 2am over in New York?”

“1:42,” Vincent says, checking his watch. “Is your whole family going to be at breakfast?”

“I’m not sure if everyone’s up,” Yves says. “But Leon and Victoire will be. I told them to be downstairs by 8, so obviously they’ll kill me if I’m not there first.”

The breakfast lounge is on the first floor, a few hallways down from the reception desk. Yves saves a table for them.

He isn’t very hungry, for some reason. Still, he fills his plate with breakfast pastries and scrambled eggs and grabs a cup of hot tea while he’s at it. He really doesn’t want to lose his voice entirely before the ceremony. Even with his jacket on—which is probably even excessive, considering the temperature of the lobby—he isn’t as warm as he’d like to be.

Victoire joins them next. She waves to Vincent as she passes. “Hope you guys got some sleep,” she says innocently.

Yves says, “We got perfectly good sleep, thank you.”

“Morning,” Leon says, appearing in the doorway at 7:59.

“You’re really cutting it close,” Yves says, sniffling.

“It’s 7:59,” Leon says. “Whether I’m on time is a binary, not a sliding scale. I’m entirely on time.”

The table Yves picked can fit more than four, so they spread themselves out through the seats. “Mom and dad said they’re having breakfast at one of the cafes nearby,” Victoire says, shrugging her sweater off and leaving it perched on the back of her seat. “They said they’d report back if it’s anything life changing.”

“There’s a welcome party tonight,” Yves says to Vincent, “For everyone who’s flown in. You’ll get to meet them then.”

“Is there anything your parents hate in a partner?” Vincent asks.

“Don’t worry too much. I don’t think— hEHh…” Yves scoots back from the table turning away as he reaches blindly for one of the cocktail napkins he’d taken. “HEHh’DDJJSHh-iiEW! Ugh, sorry.” His nose has been running all morning—he’d made sure to take a generous stack, and stuff some of them into his pockets for later, but it’s been all of fifteen minutes and he’s already nervous that he might run out. “I don’t you could get them to hate you even if you tried.”

“Mom and dad met in college, at a bar,” Leon says. Yves, who has heard this story many times before, busies himself with eating, and tries hard not to visibly shiver. In a way, he’s grateful to the two of them for filling in the space for him—the less he strains his voice today, the better. “Mom was super drunk, and for some reason when she started talking to dad the conversation topic turned to, like, something super specific and not at all romantic.”

“It was whether or not it’s ethical to clone extinct species,” Victoire says, idly folding her napkin into a pinwheel. “Though this was before it had ever been done.”

“Apparently she was drunk enough to ask his hand in marriage mid argument, and he was drunk enough to say yes, because he thought it was a joke,” Leon says. “And it was a joke. But he proposed to her seriously a year later, and all she said was ‘at least you kept your promise.’”

“But now they’re happily married,” Vincent says.

Leon nods. “They’ve been happily married for almost thirty years now. Anyways, my point is that whatever relationship you have with Yves, you don’t have to try and impress them. There’s no need to overthink it.”

“I understand,” Vincent says. “My parents got married because my dad did well in a business competition at the time, and my mom thought he was going to make a lot of money.”

“And how did that turn out?” Victoire says, interested, propping her head up on one hand.

Yves watches Vincent cut a pastry into four even pieces. “Better than you might expect,” Vincent says.

—-

The welcome dinner is held at a local restaurant—Aimee and Genevieve have rented out the outdoor space for seating. The table—a long table that seats thirty, or so—is set with tall, elegant white candles, all in a row; wine glasses with delicate stems; vases spilling over with flowers—lilacs, pink and white roses, orchids.

Above them, string lights are strung up in neat lines. When Yves sees Aimee, he doesn’t drop all of his things to run over and hug her, but it’s a close thing.

“Yves! You made it,” she says.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he tells her, in French. “God. Did you plan out all of this? It looks gorgeous.” “Genevieve did a lot of it,” she says. “She has a good eye for decorations.”

Genevieve is off to the side, talking to someone who Yves recognizes as her sister—Yves follows Aimee’s gaze over to where she’s standing. When he looks back, Aimee is smiling in a way Yves has never seen her smile before—the sort of fond, private smile that he feels like he isn’t sure he’s supposed to be seeing.

Yves is stricken, for a moment. It’s so clear that she’s in love. It shows all over her face, plainly, the kind of love that’s uncontestable; the kind of love that makes love, of all things, look simple. Has he ever looked like that, to someone else?

“How have you been?” he asks. “I imagine preparations have been hectic.”

“Never better,” she says, turning back to face him at last. “You’re right—it’s been exhausting. But I feel like the adrenaline is carrying me through, you know? Like I’m so happy this is happening.”

“You two deserve a perfect wedding,” Yves says, and means it. He clears his throat, sniffling. It’s a little cold out, even though the sun hasn’t gone down yet; he really hopes his nose doesn’t start to run visibly. “If you ever need any help—with last minute preparations, or if anything comes up, or if you need someone on transportation or moving things—let me know. Even if it’s like, 3am or something. My hands are completely free.”

She laughs. “Thank you, that’s so kind of you to offer! It has been hectic, but I haven’t been up at 3am this week, thank God.”

“I hope to keep it that way.” Yves turns away from her, raising an arm to muffle a fit of coughs into his sleeve.

Aimee takes a step forward, her eyebrows furrowing. “Are you okay? You sound a little off. And you’re coughing.”

And Yves thinks: she can’t know. He has his toasts to give at her wedding. He has the wedding rehearsal tomorrow and the wedding ceremony on Saturday to attend. If Aimee finds out he’s coming down with something, she’ll probably tell him to sit things out—to get some proper rest, to disregard virtually everything she has planned, and to not leave the hotel room until he’s feeling a hundred percent better—even if it’s at her own expense.

Worse, she’ll be worried for the entirety of his illness, he’s sure. As if she doesn’t have enough on her plate already, between the setup and all the accommodations and the last minute changes.

Aimee deserves a perfect wedding.

That’s the bottom line in all of this. This is a once in a lifetime thing for someone he cares and cares deeply about. Yves is not going to ruin it. He’ll get through the next few days, even if it means pushing himself a little past his limits. He can crash afterwards, on the plane ride home, after all the festivities are over and everyone bids farewell.

“I’m fine,” Yves says, clearing his throat. “I’m—” This is really the worst possible timing. He takes a few steps back, craning his neck over his shoulder. “hH-! hHhh’kKTSSH-IEEW! snf-! Ugh. I’mb just getting over a slight cold.” Getting over might be a bit of a stretch, and a slight cold might be even more of one, but other than that, it’s not entirely dishonest.

Aimee frowns at him. “Bless you. Does your throat hurt? There are cocktails on the side table, if you want anything to drink. Wine, too. I can get something for you if you’d like.”

“Nice try, but there’s no way I’m letting the bride go and get things for me,” Yves says, grinning. “Do you want any cocktails?”

“I need to be sober until I’ve officially said hi to everyone,” she says. “Can’t make a fool of myself just yet. Speaking of which, where’s your boyfriend?”

Yves waves Vincent over. “Come say hi!” he says, in English.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” Vincent says, in slightly accented French, which is a surprise. He seems to hesitate, thinking hard. “Congratulations on your wedding.”

“Oh my gosh!” Aimee says in English, pulling him close for a hug. Vincent hugs her back. “It’s good to meet you too, Vincent. Thanks for always looking after Yves. I’m glad to have someone keeping him out of trouble overseas.”

“Thank you for having me here,” Vincent says, hugging her back. “I know it was really last minute with the flight and everything. I hope it wasn’t too stressful for you.”

“It was no trouble at all!” Aimee says. “Yves is like a younger brother to me. Last summer was pretty rough for him, I think.” she doesn’t mention erika, but Yves is sure Vincent knows what she’s referring to, regardless. Aimee smiles, a little wistfully. “I’m just so grateful that he met you. I’m glad to see him happy again.”

“I don’t think I can take credit for that,” Vincent says, blinking.

Aimee smiles warmly at him. “He’s the happiest he’s been in months,” she says. “I think you are selling yourself short.”

After Aimee asks Vincent how his stay has been (good, Vincent says, it’s actually my first time in France, to which Aimee excitedly lists off places he absolutely has to see while he’s here) and Vincent asks Aimee how the wedding preparations are going (nothing’s gone terribly wrong yet, Aimee laughs, which I suppose is all I can ask for), they find their way to their seats at the table. Someone has set out little name cards with all of their names written in calligraphy. Yves realizes, faintly, that the handwriting isn’t Aimee’s. Maybe it’s Genevieve’s, then.

“I didn’t know you knew any French,” Yves tells Vincent, in English.

Vincent looks away, a little sheepish. “I took a crash course into it when you mentioned the wedding would be in France,” he says, which Yves finds somehow disproportionately endearing. “I know maybe five sentences total, plus a few common terms.”

“Five sentences is impressive given that you had, what, just a few weeks to learn them?”

“I’m not sure if they are very coherent,” Vincent says. “The vowels are different from English. I’m still trying to get the hang of saying them.”

Yves is about to respond, but he’s cut off with a sharp, unexpected gasp. He pitches forward, raising his elbow up to his face just in time to muffle a—

“Hh… HhEHH-!’IihH’DZSCHh-IIEW!”

He’s glad, for once, that he’s not wearing the suit he’s planning on wearing for the wedding. His nose is running again, which is embarrassing, especially because he can still feel Vincent’s eyes on him.

“À tes souhaits,” Vincent says.

Yves laughs, rummaging through his jacket pockets for one of the napkins he’d taken at breakfast to blow his nose into. “Merci. Is that one of the common terms you learned?”

“No,” Vincent says. “I looked it up last night.”

“Last night?” Yves asks.

For a moment, he’s afraid that Vincent might reveal to him that Yves had kept him up last night, after all, despite all of his efforts to keep quiet.

“On the car,” Vincent clarifies. “During the trip to the hotel. I was just curious.”

“Oh,” Yves says, relieved. He blows his nose into the napkin he’s holding, which he’s sure he has reused at least a couple times already—but with his nose running so much, he doesn’t exactly have the luxury to be picky. “Well, you’ll be an expert at saying that phrase by the end of this trip, at the very least.”

It’s easy to lose himself in the throes of conversation, after that. Aimee and Genevieve have arranged it so that he and Vincent are sitting directly across from his parents. Leon is right—his parents have never really been the type to subject the partners he’s brought home, over the years, to any sort of interrogation. It’s a fun night, especially after everyone’s a couple drinks in.

“I think it’s a good thing that you guys are in the same line of work,” Yves’s dad says, conversationally. “Yves won’t have to explain why he’s always working overtime.”

Yves’s mom says, “Isn’t that a bad thing? We shouldn’t be encouraging their workaholic tendencies.”

Yves neglects to mention that he’s pretty sure Vincent (who worked the entire flight here)’s workaholic tendencies will persist, even without any encouragement.

Vincent tells them how they’d met—it’s the same story as he’d told the first time they’d done this, during Margot’s new year party a few months back, but Yves’s parents seem to find it extremely entertaining.

Yves’s mom says, “I told you Yves was the one who asked him out.”

Yves’s dad says, “I didn’t know if he had it in him.”

Yves’s mom says, “I remember hearing him say something about having an attractive coworker. It wasn’t that much of a logical stretch to assume he’d make a move at some point.”

(Yves thinks he sees them exchange a twenty dollar bill under the table, but he can’t be sure.)

Vincent practices his French with Yves’s parents—Yves fills in for him when he stumbles on a word, or when he hesitates, wracking his memory for a term he can’t quite translate.

“A fantastic attempt,” his dad says, when Vincent is done talking. “I can’t believe you learned so much in just a few weeks. I can only hope you’ll keep learning..”

“I will,” Vincent says. “Maybe next time we can have this conversation entirely in French.” There’s no uncertainty to the way he says it. Yves doesn’t mention that there’s a real chance Vincent won’t see them again, after this. It’s not a thought he particularly wants to confront.

At some point, Leon rises to his feet and shouts, in French, “Let’s toast to Aimee and Genevieve, everyone’s favorite couple!”

They all stand and raise their glasses. Yves finds he feels a little unsteady on his feet—maybe he’s had too much to drink. He feels warm, through the flush of alcohol in his cheeks, despite the evening chill.

He’s marginally worse at covering when he’s tipsy—and worse, too, at anticipating that he’s going to sneeze in the first place. At some point during the night, someone—maybe Vincent, or maybe one of Aimee’s friends from work that are seated nearby—sets down a stack of cocktail napkins in front of him.

Yves just hopes whoever’s put it there knows how grateful he is. The night is getting colder, even though he can’t quite feel it, and his nose is running so much that he finds himself grabbing a new napkin every couple minutes to blow his nose. It’s strange, he thinks, how such a small thing can be so comforting.

At some point, too, Vincent takes the glass of wine out of his hands and switches it out with a different glass. Yves thinks it might be a cocktail, at first, but when he takes a sip, he finds it’s just orange juice.

“I think you’ve had enough to drink,” Vincent says.

“I haved’t had that much,” Yves says. But come to think of it, his head feels hazy in a way that suggests he’s just a little drunk. “Just a couple— glasses— hh-! hHhEH’IIZSCHh’iIEw! snf-!” He barely manages to cover that sneeze in time.

“Bless you,” Vincent says.

“Ugh.” Yves reaches for another napkin from the stack. He feels a little dizzy, now that he’s paying attention. “I swear, my toleradce - snf-! - used to be a lot better before I graduated.”

Vincent hides a laugh behind one hand. Yves is too tipsy to pretend he doesn’t find that a little endearing.

“What?” he asks, faux-affronted.

“Nothing,” Vincent says. “I should’ve known that you went to parties and drank irresponsibly.”

Yves laughs. “Along with every other college student in the world.” He turns aside to muffle a cough into his sleeve. Perhaps he hasn’t been especially conscientious about saving his voice this evening—with all the talking he’s been doing, it will probably sound even worse tomorrow. “What, don’t tell me you’ve ndever gotten irresponsibly drunk!”

“Once or twice,” Vincent says, which is a bit of a surprise—he can’t imagine Vincent being drunk enough to lose the air of… well, composure isn’t the right word, perhaps. Professionalism? Self-assuredness? But maybe even drunk Vincent is professional and self-assured, all the same. Yves wonders, faintly, if he’ll ever have the chance to find out.

—

Dinner winds down slowly. Yves helps Genevieve collect all the name cards, gathers everyone’s plates to set them in a couple neat stacks at the end of the table, says hello to the relatives he’s closer to, and strikes up a conversation with some of Genevieve’s friends, who look to be just a few years older than he is. They talk first about the planning she’d kept them in the loop about, and then about the planning that she’d pulled off behind the scenes. Yves tells them about the many aesthetic and managerial decisions Aimee had consulted him for early on over text. The common consensus seems to be that Aimee and Genevieve are vastly overqualified when it comes to making sure that everything is logistically sound.

“Do you want to head out soon?” Vincent says, after some time, when Yves returns to his seat and some of the other guests have begun to filter out.

“That might be a good idea,” Yves says.

He says his goodbyes—to his parents, to Leon and Victoire, to Aimee and Genevieve, whom he’ll see tomorrow. Then he follows Vincent out. The hotel is a fifteen minute walk from where they are—some of their relatives have cars, but they’d walked here, and Yves thinks it’d be more work to try to coordinate a ride with someone.

Everything feels bright, Yves thinks, blinking.

“You’re cold,” Vincent says. It isn’t a question.

Yves realizes, faintly, that he’s shivering. He crosses his arms over his chest. “I don’t feel it that much.”

“That’s because you’re drunk.”

“I’m ndot drunk.”

“Tipsy, then.”

Yves can’t argue with that. “Just a bit. I’ll probably— hhEh-!” He turns aside to direct the sneeze over his shoulder, away from Vincent. HH-! hHEHh’iIITSHh-IIEw! Snf-! —sober up soon.” The end of the sentence catches wrong on his throat and suddenly he’s coughing, a little harshly, into his wrist. The coughing fit is harsh enough to leave him faintly lightheaded, which is a surprise to him.

He thinks it shouldn’t be visible, but Vincent reaches out and grabs his shoulder to steady him. For a moment, Yves contemplates how nice it would be to lean into his touch.

Then he catches himself. He’s tired, but not so tired that he can’t sustain a short walk from the dinner venue to the hotel. It’s dark, but they don’t have any early obligations tomorrow, and it’s not late enough that he won’t have time to shower, get changed, and get a good night’s sleep, with time to spare.

Yves shifts out of Vincent’s touch. “Sorry about that,” he says, with the most convincing smile he can muster. He’s sure Vincent would be understanding if he brought it up, but truthfully, it feels like a waste of time to say anything at all.

Vincent doesn’t reach for him again, but his eyebrows furrow. “Are you okay?”

“What?”

“You almost fell,” Vincent says.

“I just tripped. The roads aren’t very even, and it’s dark.” They’re standing in the middle of a small, winding cobblestone street. None of the roads around here are very flat for very long.

“Are you saying that because you believe it?” Vincent says. “Or are you saying that so that I stop worrying about this?”

Yves stares at him for a moment too long. He’s sobering up a little.

For a moment, he contemplates telling Vincent everything—about how tired he’s been, all day. About how much it’s taken out of him to keep up this front, the whole day; about how he feels worse than he did waking up this morning—tired and cold and congested, a little unsteady on his feet. If he’s not mistaken, he thinks he might be running a slight fever; it’s hard to tell through the jacket, through the brisk evening air.

Maybe Vincent would understand. Maybe Vincent would insist that he get some rest, tomorrow, before the wedding. Maybe Vincent would tell him that this is all going to be fine—that this wedding that Yves’s been looking forward to for months, that he desperately doesn’t want to mess up, is going to be perfect, just as Aimee and Genevieve has planned it, even if he isn’t feeling his best.

But this is not Vincent’s problem to solve. Yves’s bad timing and his unfortunate circumstances are not Vincent’s responsibility, and Yves extended the invitation because he wanted Vincent to have fun on this trip, and no part of that entails having to look after Yves. Vincent has always been reliable, but Yves can’t start to expect things out of him—to take his kindness as a given, to take more than Vincent is willing to give.

He already asks more than enough of Vincent, as it stands.

“I’m fine,” Yves says, a lie, as easily as any other lie he’s ever told. The smile that follows comes easily, too, though he’s not sure if Vincent can see it in the dark, can’t tell if it’s more to fool Vincent or more to fool himself. “I’d tell you if I wasn’t.”

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