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suddencolds · 3 months ago

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duffel bag, packed light (yves/vincent AU fic)

Hello! Happy (definitely-not-late) Valentines day. <3 I hesitated on posting this because it's a little disjointed, but I think I need to kick it out of my drafts (go! leave!) before it gets stuck in there forever.

My kind anonymous prompter dropped some of the most fire prompts known to mankind in their submission 😭🙏 These are the two which I went with:

Write an AU oneshot that is completely different from the current Yvescent setting using a combination of 3 or more of the following emojis: 🏝️🎒🛳️🗓️📓🌧️🍱🌠🎬 + hear me out what if we got um spicy kink!Yves or kink!Vincent au 👀 and flowers or an irritant of your choosing

This whole fic is AU!Yves + AU!Vincent w/ the kink, in which they are not coworkers, but instead meet as strangers on a cruise, and Yves turns out to be allergic to something unexpected 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️. I should apologize for the long exposition; the first half of this reads more like a character study. If you don't care about how they meet, you can scroll down to the section labeled "Firsts"!

—

The stranger breaks the silence first.

“It’s a nice view,” he says.

They’re on one of the rooftop floors. It’s surprisingly crowded out here—apparently Vincent’s idea to take an evening walk was far from original. Vincent looks out at the unending expanse of water before them, the sky dark, the cruise deck high enough that the waves below them are almost too small to make out.

“It is,” Vincent agrees.

“I’m sure you’ve seen the ocean plenty,” the stranger says, leaning out onto the railing. The wind picks up on the strands of his light brown hair. “Assuming you’re a cruise person.”

Vincent contemplates going with the assumption. He is not obligated to tell the truth, of course—that he is terribly out of place here; that, if he’s being honest, it is a little strange and embarrassing to be here alone.

“I am not a cruise person,” Vincent says. “I won the tickets through a work raffle.”

“A work raffle?” The stranger turns to him, perking up.

Vincent nods.

“You’re kidding me,” the stranger says, suddenly animated. “You should’ve bought a lottery ticket right after, with that kind of luck.”

“I think I’ve used up all my luck reserves,” Vincent says. “Out of everyone who could have won, I may be the least suited to be doing this.”

“What does that mean? That you don’t like cruises?” When Vincent shakes his head, the stranger stills, contemplative. “Do you get seasick or something?”

“I am not the kind of person who would pay for a cruise.”

“Huh. Well, I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t have to pay for this one.”

Vincent supposes that is true. His coworkers had been happy for him when the announcement had come out—are you serious? I’m so jealous! And you’re going to love it! And Take lots of pictures! We’ll definitely be grilling you for them when you get back!—he thinks he probably ought to be happy, too, considering how expensive this kind of thing would be normally, considering how statistically unlikely it had been for him to win.

Instead, he’d felt a sort of blankness, bewilderment veering on apathy—but it would be ungrateful to turn this kind of thing down, or to sell it off to someone else, wouldn’t it? In the end, he’d nodded a little stiffly at them, and smiled, and promised them their pictures.

“And what about you?” Briefly, Vincent entertains the possibility that this stranger is someone who takes ten cruises a year—the exact opposite kind of person that Vincent is, the kind of person who likes being hundred of miles out from the nearest coast, who likes the extravagance of the room service and the on-deck waterslides and the quaint high class diners, who likes talking to strangers. “Is this your hundredth cruise?”

The stranger laughs. “It’s actually my second. I was planning to go with someone. We bought two tickets way back—not company-sponsored, by the way, though I wish they were.”

“Did they decide to call it a night early?” Vincent asks.

The stranger laughs—a short, curt laugh. Vincent cannot tell if it’s genuine. “She’s actually not here. She couldn’t make it.”

It seems strange, to Vincent, that someone might miss something as expensive as a cruise. “Something else came up?”

“To be frank, I was in a relationship with her up until two weeks ago,” the stranger says. Then he laughs again, a little self-deprecatingly. “Sorry, that’s probably too much information.”

“Oh,” Vincent says. “I’m sorry about the breakup.”

The stranger waves a hand. “It’s fine. She left me the tickets, which wasn’t cool, but I found someone to resell hers to, even though it was sort of last minute. Facebook marketplace is the maker of miracles. The guy who bought it is somewhere on this ship, though I don’t think I could point him out to you.”

“Are you alright?”

The stranger blinks at him. He looks a little caught off guard. “Sorry?”

“With the breakup,” Vincent clarifies. “Two weeks ago is still recent. Are you alright?”

The stranger is quiet for a moment. “That’s very considerate of you to ask,” he says, at last.

Vincent looks away from him. “That’s not an answer.”

The stars are starting to come out. The ocean stretches out, wide and dark, beyond them. The stranger says, after a moment: “With a view like this, who wouldn’t be?”

He reaches up a hand to swipe at his eyes. His sleeve doesn’t linger for very long. If Vincent weren’t looking, he might mistake the motion for something casual, something unassuming.

The stranger squeezes his eyes shut, and takes in a breath. The exhale that follows is carefully, meticulously even.

Vincent doesn’t know what it is that prompts him to open his mouth. It’s a stupid, impulsive decision, directed towards someone to which he has no allegiance. It’s entirely unlike him.

And yet.

“My cabin number’s 3-75-F.” he says, before he can think better of himself. “If you need company, or if you want to talk about how your ex was the worst person on earth, we can get dinner, or just take a walk. If you don’t, I won’t take it personally.”

He turns, starts off in the direction of the deck entrance—this is preferable, he thinks, to sticking around to hear the stranger’s response. Judging by the size of the cruise ship, there are probably two thousand people on board. Vincent tells himself that it’s statistically unlikely he will run into this particular stranger again, which means his offer doesn’t have to mean anything at all.

“Wait,” the stranger says, falling into step with him.

Vincent turns.

“That actually sounds really nice. I’m glad you offered. Dinner, tomorrow at 6?” The stranger extends a hand. When Vincent looks up, he is surprised to find that he’s smiling. “I’m Yves.”

Vincent takes it. “Vincent.” he tries to keep his surprise out of his voice. “I’ll be free.”

Yves says: “Great! I hear there’s a restaurant on the third floor which people really like. Do you like seafood?”

“Seafood’s great.”

Yves grins. “I’ll make the reservation tonight. Goodnight, Vincent.”

“Goodnight,” Vincent says, before he can second guess himself into taking it back. He has the distinct sense that he’s just gotten himself into something he’s fundamentally ill-equipped to handle.

—

In truth, the first time Yves meets Vincent is not the first time they meet. Vincent meets Yves for the first time when he’s in line to board. This, like their second meeting, is a coincidence.

—

Before.

The stranger is smiling.

The girl he’s talking is interested in him. That’s the first thing Vincent notices. It’s not a secret—it’s evident in the way she cranes her entire body towards the stranger as he speaks. Evident in the way she laughs, her shoulders shaking, after he tells her something Vincent can’t quite decipher; evident in the way her eyes snap to his hands as he gesticulates.

Briefly, Vincent wonders how they know each other. A couple? But the more Vincent watches, the more he realizes that that doesn’t make sense. His body language is so deceptively open, as if to dismantle any line upheld between the two of them, but he is careful not to touch her. Likewise, she doesn’t reach for him, even though—from the way her gaze lingers on his arm, too long, loaded—Vincent thinks she probably wants to.

Long-time friends, then? Whatever the stranger is saying is too novel, and the girl is nodding vigorously at him, now, and Vincent can see that she’s trying to make a good impression. Have they just met tonight, then? The girl rummages through her purse for her phone, pauses briefly to type something out. Holds the screen up so he can see it.

The stranger leans in, his face intimately close to her, to peer down at it, too. There is something so confoundingly thoughtless about the gesture. It is almost as though there is a gap in how long they have known each other—as if she is, to him, already a longtime friend. There is no nervousness to the way he regards her, no pointed self-consciousness.

It’s a little interesting, Vincent thinks. He wonders, briefly, if the stranger knows that she likes him.

What strikes him about the arrangement is how open he is. It’s peculiar. It is as if they are not strangers at all. He holds the conversation seamlessly, with such warmth that Vincent marvels at it, as easily as if he has known her for years.

—

Dinner.

It’s around 5:41 when Vincent hears the knock on his cabin door.

The cruise room is more comfortable than he’d expected it to be. The ship is large enough that it feels oddly stationary, and the room—despite its relatively low ceilings and narrow walkways—has an excellent view of the ocean when he pulls back the curtain—the unmoving blue line of it, the inky sky above it, the clouds low on the horizon.

Vincent, who had been half expecting Yves to not show up at all, puts his book down on the nightstand and heads towards the door.

When he opens it, Yves is dressed in a button-down collared shirt and slacks. He looks boyishly handsome, Vincent thinks—kind of like he could be a movie star, probably someone who would play a childhood-friend-turned-lover.

“You’re early,” Vincent says.

Yves checks his watch. “I guess I am. Did I catch you unprepared?”

“No, I’m ready,” Vincent says, nodding towards the hallway. “Lead the way.”

The living quarters on the cruise are ordered in neat rows. They head down a long hallway toward the central elevators. Yves talks about his morning—about how he’d spent his time perusing the second floor shops, how he’d played one game at a casino, won twenty dollars, and now he’s determined to never go back. (“I need to keep the net positive,” he says, “statistically unlikely as it is.” “You’re already doing better than everyone else in the casino,” Vincent says.)

The elevator ride is short. The cruise technically has fifteen floors—more if you count the partial floors at the top: the rooftop bar, the rooftop garden and grill.

“I can’t wait till we get to shore,” Yves says. “Not that the cruise isn’t nice, and all, but whenever I take a walk on deck, it never really feels like I’m stretching my legs.”

It’s Thursday evening. They’ll dock early tomorrow morning at the Amber Cove cruise island, spend a few hours there out on the beach, and then head back onto the cruise for their next stop. Vincent has packed swim trunks, sunglasses, a couple bottles of sunscreen, but the idea of going to the beach on his own feels distinctly out of character. He’s never been the kind of person to seek out experiences like this—sunny and indulgent—on his own, without someone else to pull him into them.

He supposes this isn’t really an exception. The company tickets which landed him on this ship in the first place were the catalyst to everything.

“You haven’t eaten here before,” Yves asks, as they round the corner to the door of the restaurant, “have you?”

“No,” Vincent says. “I’ve only been to the diner on the second floor.”

Yves smiles back at him. “That’s good. I don’t have to cancel my reservation, then.” “I wouldn’t have made you cancel it anyway.”

“You seem too polite to do that sort of thing,” Yves says, with a laugh. “There are too many things to do on deck for me to be dragging you to the same few places.”

Yves relays his reservation name and time to the waiter, who shows them to a table by the window. The restaurant is dimly lit—the majority of the light is coming from a single candle that sits in front of them, next to a vase of tastefully arranged flowers.

“This place is very romantic,” Vincent says.

Yves blinks at him. “I guess it is. Does that bother you?”

Vincent thinks that he can easily imagine another version of this evening—a dinner in which the seat across from Yves is occupied by his ex. An evening where they talk and laugh over a shared bottle of wine and eat the best seafood on the ship.

“I can see why you would have wanted to come here with her,” Vincent says. “I’m sure you had a lot to look forward to. I’m sorry.”

Yves glances back at him, his expression unreadable. Then he looks down. “You don’t have to be sorry,” he says. “You didn’t have any part in it.”

“In your decision?” “In hers.” He shakes his head with a laugh that doesn’t quite show in his eyes. “It wasn’t mine to decide. She rekindled an old relationship at a bar. It was with this guy who went to the same college as the both of us, though I didn’t know him that well.”

He unfolds his cloth napkin and positions it gingerly on his lap. “I didn’t even know that they were friends, or that she would be meeting up with him. We were still together when it all happened, and then suddenly we weren’t.”

“That must have been painful for you,” Vincent says.

“I probably should’ve known better,” Yves says, tilting his head up to the ceiling. He smiles, a little self-deprecating.“I think there were probably signs that I missed. It’s the sort of thing you dwell on, you know. If everything really came out of left field, or if she’s already been falling out of love for a long time. This is depressing, but I keep thinking about—well, if maybe I could’ve done something to fix things if I’d realized it sooner.”

“You shouldn’t have had to,” Vincent says.

Yves blinks at him. “What?”

Vincent looks down—at the flowers between them, arranged artfully in a shallow glass vase. “You shouldn’t have had to do anything. You shouldn’t have had to speculate at all.” He doesn’t know why he’s saying this. It is none of his business, he knows, and besides, it’s not as though Yves has asked for his opinion. He finds himself thinking, abruptly, to Yves’s conversation with the girl in line, a couple spots ahead of him—the girl smiling, leaning close; Yves somehow reflecting back her interest with warmth.

It is part of the reason why Vincent is here, right now, if he’s honest with himself. Vincent understands exactly why people would be drawn to that particular sort of warmth. It’s the sort of warmth he doesn’t know how to cultivate, probably wouldn’t be able to cultivate, even if he tried. It is evident even now, in the way Yves seems to so readily offer his ex the benefit of the doubt, in the way his warmth extends towards her still.

“If she was having second thoughts, then she should’ve said something. You shouldn’t have been expected to read her mind,” Vincent says. Perhaps being so honest is overkill, but even if no one else in Yves’s life will say it, Vincent finds he has no such reservations. “At the very least, she should’ve ended things with you before looking for other options. Frankly, your ex sounds like a terrible person.”

Yves blinks at him, a little taken aback. “I’m sure I’m giving you a very biased impression of her. She’s a pretty reasonable person.”

“Reasonable people can do bad things,” Vincent says, crossing his arms. On some level, he understands—of course Yves, with his proximity to the problem, would not see it this way. “Your ex hooked up with someone behind your back. I find it hard to believe that someone who had your best interests in mind would do that.”

Yves seems to consider this.

“I don’t think I’ll be in the business of forgiveness anytime soon,” he says, as if he is choosing his words carefully. “You’re right to say that what she did was pretty terrible.”

Vincent raises an eyebrow. “But?”

Yves is quiet, for a moment.

“I think it would be easier,” he says, at last, with a small smile. “If I thought about her that way.”

It’s a confession that Vincent has already figured out. “You still think highly of her. It makes sense.”

“She was my best friend for three years.” he shakes his head, smiling. “I thought—I don’t know what I thought. When I thought about a future with her, everything seemed so intuitive. Like all the problems that could come up would be things we’d already know how to work through.”

The waiter stops by their table to ask them for their choice in refreshments. Yves greets him with a polite smile—one that Vincent finds no holes in—and asks for one of the drinks on the cocktail menu. Vincent picks something at random, to match.

“Sorry,” Yves says, after the waiter leaves. “I didn’t mean to get into such a depressing tangent. We don’t have to talk about my ex. I’ll give you time to actually look over the menu.”

Vincent says, “You don’t have to apologize. I won’t take long.” He opens the menu—it is nice, he thinks, that all the food and drink is included in the cruise fare which he didn’t have to pay for—makes a mental list of all the items which look interesting, and stack ranks them in his head. Then he shuts the menu and sets it off to the edge of the table, so the waiter won’t have to lean over to pick it up.

He feels, without looking, that Yves is watching him.

“You weren’t kidding. You’re very efficient.”

Vincent meets his eyes from across the table. Yves has his own menu open, too, but he’s pretty sure Yves has been waiting for him. “You decided more quickly than I did.”

“I cheated and looked up the menu beforehand,” Yves says. “I didn’t want to subject you to my indecisiveness.”

This makes sense to Vincent—as does the early knock on his door. “You were looking forward to eating here.”

“With a hot stranger,” Yves says, with a laugh. “Yes.”

The compliment is unexpected. It settles something inside of him, something nervous and wanting, though Yves says it offhandedly enough that Vincent thinks he probably shouldn’t take it to heart. He raises an eyebrow. “Am I still a stranger? We’ve exchanged names.”

Yves laughs. “I guess we can be acquaintances, then.”

The waiter arrives with their cocktails—Yves’s has a sprig of lavender near the rim, and Vincent’s has a dried orange slice and a stem of mint—and sets them down in the middle of the table. They place their orders.

After the waiter leaves, Vincent shifts his cocktail a little closer to him. He’s not much of a drinker, but his drink of choice is usually on the sweeter side.

“Does it live up to your expectations?” Yves asks.

“The drink?”

“The cruise.”

“I don’t know if I had many expectations to begin with,” Vincent says. “The ship is bigger than I thought it would be. I’m still finding my way around.”

“Have you explored everything already?”

“Not everything.” Vincent thinks through his morning. “I walked around the shopping center, and then the fourth floor plaza.” he says. “I stopped by the theater, too, though I didn’t sit down for a show.”

He thinks, distantly, that perhaps the ship’s amenities are getting wasted on him—during his walk through the shopping center, he’d briefly thought about bringing gifts back for his coworkers and ultimately decided that if he’s going to do any shopping, it should probably be on his last day here, not his second. “I went up to the deck to see the pools. There were more distinct pools than I imagined—I had assumed they’d all be connected.”

“Did you go swimming?”

“I didn’t.”

“So you just walked around all twelve of the pools,” Yves says, incredulous, “without ever getting in?”

Vincent can see how this fact could potentially be off-putting. “The pools were all pretty crowded. I decided it’d be more symbolic if the first time I change into a swimsuit is tomorrow, after we dock.”

It isn’t entirely the truth. Truthfully—and he thinks this might be worse—he’d been more preoccupied with taking pictures of everything—nicely framed shots of the different pools, the different entrances of the shopping center, the crowds gathered around the theater for the midday show—half so he can have something to show his coworkers when he gets back to work (and thus, dispel any accusations of his own ungratefulness around winning) and half so he can have something to send back to his family (particularly Ji-Sung, who he thinks will get a kick out of seeing all of the amenities).

“You’re really serious about this,” Yves says, looking strangely amused. “Are the vacations you go on always so structured?”

Vincent says, “something like that. The cruise is not the main attraction, anyway.”

“For some people, it is.”

“For the same people who make it a mission to take a swim in all twelve of the pools, maybe,” Vincent says, and Yves smiles.

Yves, as it turns out, is an easy person to talk to. Vincent finds out that he doesn’t get seasick—or carsick, for that matter—but that he feels a little claustrophobic if he doesn’t go up to the deck (“to remind me that we’re actually still making progress towards some destination,” he says. “That way, I don’t feel as though I’m trapped in some giant feat of human engineering.”) He finds out that Yves has two siblings, both of them younger; that most of his extended family lives in france; that he likes vacationing in warm places; that the next time he steps foot onto a cruise, it will probably be with his younger sister and his younger brother. That he’d been working late for three weeks in a row to make this trip happen; that it feels a little wrong, now, to have nothing pressing to do.

It turns out to be a nice night, after all.

—

Firsts.

The cologne is an offhanded purchase.

It’s not something Vincent thinks much about when he picks it up. It’s on the third day that he purchases it, after he holds too long of a conversation with the sales assistant—who seems to have an uncanny ability for translating whatever it is he says into one recommendation, and another, and another—to feel like he can walk away unguiltily. In the end, he settles with a tall, sleek bottle with a wooden cap. The cap is lined in gold—to suggest that this is a classy choice, presumably—to match the serif lettering on the front, which says Wood & Flame.

It’s not something he intends on using, either—that is, until Yves messages him, dinner? And then, a moment later: feeling kind of lazy tonight. Mb we can order in

Vincent texts back, Sure. Let’s order in. 6:30?

Yves’s response is immediate. You haven’t been to my room yet, right? I can host :)

It doesn’t mean anything, Vincent thinks, that the dress shirt he picks out is the newest one he owns, that he spends time ironing the creases out of it. It doesn’t have to mean anything, when he lingers longer than usual in front of the bathroom mirror, suddenly apprehensive. Yves is asking him out of friendly camaraderie, and nothing more. He runs another hand through his hair, catches himself, lowers it. Fixes his tie, straightens his collar, finds himself having to fix it again.

With a hot stranger, Yves had said, as if it was nothing. So offhandedly it seemed almost like it didn’t even matter—a throwaway comment, maybe.

The cologne is an afterthought—he spritzes some on his wrists, and then, upon further thought, sprays some in behind his ears. It’s probably not going to be noticeable anyways, unless Yves gets close enough, which is unlikely. The scent of it is somewhat mild, understated—that had been one of the factors which had led him to pick it up in the first place—even when he lifts his wrist to his face, it’s not nearly as obvious as he expects it to be.

The bottle is large enough that it seems as though it will never run out—the liquid in it seems to be at the same level as before, even though he feels like he’s been generous enough in his application of it. He’s starting to think he won’t have enough occasions to wear it to.

Perhaps he will get some mileage out of this purchase tonight. Or perhaps, optimistically, this bottle will last him the rest of his life, he’ll never have to shop for cologne again in his lifetime. If he thinks about it that way, it doesn’t seem like such a financially bad investment.

—

Through his walk down the long, narrow hallway, and up two flights of stairs, Vincent prepares himself for the moment when Yves opens the door.

He’s still caught off guard, though, when the door swings open. Yves is dressed in a green button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows—the shirt is loose-fitting, but the way the fabric tightens around his arms does not do a good job of obscuring the muscle definition underneath—and well-fitted khaki chinos. His light brown hair is tied up in its usual low ponytail, but the strands which were too short to secure are tucked behind his ear.

“You made it!” He grins—it’s the kind of charming smile that completely overtakes his features—and steps aside to let Vincent in. “Now you can compare how different the rooms are three floors up.”

Vincent looks past him, at the arrangement of the room. “It looks like the same elements have undergone a few different transformations,” he says. “The wall art in this room looks more like it’s trying to remind you what you’re here for.”

Yves follows his gaze to the large landscape painting which hangs in the living room, to the right of the TV. It’s a watercolor drawing of waves crashing onto a white sand beach, except it’s drawn in a way that the waves closer to shore are saturated and dazzling, and the waves further from the shore fade out in color into the horizon. There’s faint detailing of buildings in the distance, too. Vincent is pretty sure it’s supposed to be the shoreline of Nassau, which they’re set to dock at two days from now.

“Huh,” Yves says. “It’s sort of like it’s taunting me. What’s in yours?”

“Mostly abstract art,” Vincent says. “Aside from that, a photograph of a conch shell, up close. There’s also a photograph of a ship out at sea, with no land in sight.”

Yves laughs. “That’s pretty ironic. I heard that lower floors are better for seasickness. It would probably suck to be seasick, and then when you look up you’re forced to look at some sailboat in the middle of nowhere. Super on-the-nose.”

Vincent smiles. “It’s probably a good reality check.” he presses closer in to leave his jacket—which he is realizing now that he doesn’t need, but which he brought with him just in case, on the occasion that their evening culminates in a night-time walk on the deck—folded on Yves’s couch. “Were you thinking of ordering room service?”

“Yep,” Yves says. “I think everything on there is complimentary except for the wine. Do you need the room service menu?”

“I took a look at it already,” Vincent says. “I recalled that a certain someone does his research early.”

Yves looks briefly taken aback. Then he laughs. “You caught me. I totally did look at it beforehand. Though I was ready to act indecisive if you needed more time.”

“Very gentlemanly,” Vincent says. “Should we call in?”

Yves ends up calling for room service, on both of their behalf. (“That sounds really good,” he says, when Vincent recites his order to him. “It was probably my second choice.” “You can try some when it comes,” Vincent says.) He orders wine, too, to share, and waves off Vincent’s offer to split the cost.

After that, they settle on the living room couch. Yves says: “I’m thinking we can put something on while we wait for dinner to arrive? But probably not something you care about too much, because I might talk over it.” he passes the remote over to Vincent.

Vincent flips through the channels. There’s some sitcom which is playing which seems somewhat suitable, up until one of the couples gets into a sincere-seeming argument onscreen and Vincent thinks that, considering Yves’s semi-recent breakup, maybe everything with romance should be quietly vetoed. He eventually settles on one of those reality TV shows where people have to partake in increasingly difficult obstacle courses in order to not get eliminated.

“These are always fun,” Yves says. “You know about hysterical strength? I’ve always wondered if being nervous on these kinds of shows helps you or hurts you.”

He reaches up with a hand to scrub at his eyes. Vincent looks over at him with a frown.

“Are you tired?”

“No,” Yves says. He blinks, and then sniffles—if Vincent isn’t mistaken, his eyes are a little watery.

“Bored of the competition already?”

“Not at all. I think these kinds of shows are manufactured so that you can’t get bored.”

“There’s probably an optimal amount of nervousness,” Vincent says, “to answer your question. I’ve found that to be true with public speaking.”

“Huh,” Yves says. “Does your work require a lot of public speaking?”

“Not particularly. Mostly internal presentations, occasionally a conference.” He looks over at Yves. “If you weren’t tired before, talking about my work is going to make you tired for sure.”

Yves laughs. “No way. I love hearing about other people’s work.”

“It’s not very life or death. There are no obstacle courses. Just a lot of regression analysis.”

Yves blinks at him. “Do you work in business, by any chance?”

Vincent nods. “I’m a quantitative analyst.”

“Huh,” Yves says, contemplative. “I heard it’s very competitive.” He sniffles again, quietly enough that it almost goes unheard. “You must be good at math.”

“A small subset of math,” Vincent says. “What do you work in?”

“Wealth management. It’s a little more client-centric, so I had to plan pretty far ahead to take time off for thihh-!” The inhale is sharp, unexpected. They’re sitting close enough to each other that Vincent can feel Yves stiffen beside him, can feel the sharp upwards stutter of his shoulders as his breath hitches again. “hHeh-!” He pivots away from Vincent, burying his face into his elbow—polite, Vincent thinks—and then, after a long, torturous moment, loses the fight to a loud, vocal, “HhHEh-IIDZschH-iEEw!”

Vincent wills himself not to look. “Bless you,” he says, staring straight ahead. Onscreen, a contestant loses her balance on a high mounted totem and drops straight down into the water, much to the dismay of her teammates. It is a wholly ineffective means of distraction.

Yves’s sneeze—like Yves—is painfully Vincent’s type.

“Ugh,” Yves says, sniffling again. He lowers his elbow slowly. “Sorry about that. Where was I?”

“You said you had to plan far ahead to take time off,” Vincent says. It’s no small miracle that he remembers this.

“Right, yeah,” Yves says, and launches into a story about the hoops he’d had to jump through to make sure all the clients he was assigned to would have their needs accounted for.

“That’s a lot of work for a week’s absence,” Vincent says.

Yves laughs. “Yeah. Sometimes the pickier clients really hate the idea of not getting round-the-clock attention. I’m— hh-! hHEH-!” He reaches up with a hand to scrub at his nose, though the look of ticklish irritation doesn’t quite leave his expression—Vincent really shouldn’t have looked. After a moment, he lowers his hand, takes in another uncertain breath, as if he’s still testing the waters. “Ugh, I lost it. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. This must be distracting for you.”

Distracting is an understatement. “Don’t worry about it,” Vincent says. “Is it worse during tax season?”

“Oh, yeah. No one in their right mind really takes off during tax season, snf-! It’s not like, officially against any rules, but it’s pretty openly acknowledged as one of those suggestions that’s not actually very optional. That doesn’t affect you guys as much, does it?”

“No,” Vincent says. “My free time is mostly dependent on project deadlines.”

“The ticket you won happened to not conflict with any of those?”

“I brought my work laptop with me,” Vincent says, a little sheepishly.

Yves’s eyes widen. “No way.”

“It’s not like I’m working long hours,” Vincent says. “Just some catch-up work, here and there. I don’t want there to be any surprises when I get back.”

“Always putting out fires,” Yves says, shaking his head. “It’s probably good that you won the—” He reaches over to lay a hand on Vincent’s arm—presumably as a comforting gesture—only he wrenches away at the last second. “The— Hheh-! Hh… hHEH-!” There’s another brief pause, as though whatever is affecting him has left him stranded again on the precipice of a sneeze. For a moment, Vincent prepares himself mentally for another false start.

But then Yves takes in another sharp, ticklish breath, and it turns out to be enough to set him over the edge. “hh’hEHh’iITSSSCHh-EEw!”

The sneeze snaps him forward at the waist to meet the crook of a hastily-raised arm. It’s just as attractive as the first, if not more—Vincent can hear his voice in the ending syllable, can hear the ticklish desperation in the release. Yves keeps his face buried in his elbow for a moment longer, sniffling wetly.

It takes everything in Vincent to not visibly shiver. What are the chances, really, that the attractive stranger-slash-acquaintance he’s having dinner with—someone who, when this cruise is over, he probably will never see again—just happens to have a sneeze which happens to be perfectly aligned with his tastes?

“Bless you again,” he says. “Are you okay?”

“I feel fine,” Yves says, with another sniffle, his eyebrows furrowing. “I don’t think I’m getting sick. I was fine earlier.”

“Are you allergic to anything?”

“Not that I know of,” Yves says. “No seasonal allergies. Nothing pet-wise, either.”

Vincent tries, and fails, to think of what else might be causing this. The cabins seem too clean, too well-ventilated, to be dusty. There are no flowers anywhere in sight. Is Yves coming down with something, then? But he’d said I don’t think I’m getting sick, with the certainty of someone who probably isn’t.

“Let me know if you start feeling worse,” Vincent says.

Yves smiles at him. “I will. I’m really fine, I promise. It’s just—” he reaches up with a hand to rub his nose. A distant look crosses his expression for a moment—as though he’s warring against the need to do something about it—before his breathing levels off. “—tickish, snf! Not unpleasant.”

The sneezing doesn’t stop. Yves, for the most part, proceeds as though he’s completely unaffected by it—he’s no quieter than usual. It’s as though every time he feels the need to sneeze, he is intent on ignoring it until the need is too pressing to ignore. When that happens, he turns away just in time, except for a couple close calls when he misjudges and instead doubles forward with a sneeze directed into his lap, sniffling afterwards.

Vincent blesses him intermittently, but otherwise offers up no comment. Yves apologizes sheepishly, after the fourth or fifth sneeze, for interrupting the show. Vincent doesn’t tell him that he probably couldn’t care less about the show. Truthfully, he has no clue what’s going on onscreen anymore—obstacle course shows are interesting, but not that interesting.

Dinner arrives not too long after. Vincent can barely focus on the seafood pasta he’s ordered, though he offers Yves a bite, as promised. Yves unfolds one of the napkins room service leaves for them and blows his nose quietly into it. He sniffles afterwards—as though his nose is properly running, now—and resumes talking as usual.

Vincent crosses his legs, does his best to ignore the heat radiating below his stomach. This is really bad timing. The entire inexplicable setup—the fact that they’re sitting so close to each other; the fact that he can physically feel Yves tense beside him, rigid with anticipation, his shoulders jolting upwards with every inhale—is honestly nothing short of torturous.

It’s worse, too, that Vincent can see the ticklish irritation in Yves’s features—the crease of his eyebrows, the fluttering eyelashes, the sharp, uncontrolled gasp—before he wrenches forward with another desperate sneeze. It’s always a full-body endeavor—something that snaps him forward at the waist, leaves him bent over, a little breathless, sniffling wetly.

It absolutely doesn’t help that the underside of Yves’s nose is slightly flushed red, now, from the unusual attention—perhaps this is to be expected, seeing as Yves keeps rubbing it. More than once, Vincent contemplates asking to use Yves’s bathroom, and subsequently, well, getting rid of the problem at hand. Yves has no idea what this is all doing to him. After all, how would he know?

It’s only when they’re almost done with dinner that it clicks.

“Hold on,” Vincent says. Yves had said he wasn’t allergic to anything, but there’s a first time for everything, right? Particularly, there’s always a first time exposure to allergens. That first time might come later in life for those that are less commonplace.

It seems glaringly obvious, in hindsight. Yves hadn’t been sniffling when he’d opened the door for Vincent, had he? From the way he’d reacted to the first sneeze, it didn’t seem like this has been going on for long.

But of course. He’d been so focused on the environment that he hadn’t considered it. There’s only one thing Vincent did tonight which was pointedly out of the ordinary.

The realization leaves him feeling suddenly cold.

“Yves.” Vincent flinches away. “I think I know what’s causing this.”

Yves pauses. “What is it?”

“I’m wearing new cologne,” he says. “I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it earlier. I didn’t think much of it when I was applying it.” He feels a little like an asshole, now that they’re discussing it. It wasn’t his intention to leave Yves suffering. He hadn’t known. But still, the fact that they’ve been sitting in such close proximity this whole time definitely hasn’t helped.

The last thing he wants to do right now is look at Yves, but he forces himself to, anyway—wrenches his gaze upwards until he meets Yves’s eyes. “I’m really sorry. I should’ve made the connection earlier.”

Yves blinks at him. He doesn’t seem as upset about this as Vincent thinks he should be—strangely, he doesn’t seem upset at all. “Are you saying you think I’m allergic?”

“Allergic, or sensitive, yes,” Vincent says, frowning. “In any case, I take full responsibility. I should probably just—”

“Wait,” Yves says, reaching out with a hand to latch onto Vincent’s wrist. “I haven’t been allergic to anything before.”

“It’s probably not something common,” Vincent says, wondering if he should pull away.

“You applied it to your wrists?” Yves asks.

Vincent nods, a little stiffly. He doesn’t quite trust himself to speak. It feels like Yves’s fingertips are burning holes into his arm.

Everything that happens after happens in a flash. Yves tightens his grip around Vincent’s wrist, pulls it gently towards him, and leans down to take a long, indulgent inhale.

Vincent feels all of the blood drain from his face. He rounds on Yves, wide-eyed. “What are you—?”

The reaction is almost immediate. Yves drops Vincent’s arm as if he’s been scalded. He shuts his eyes, barely turns to the side in time for a harsh, “hhEHH’iiDZZSHH-iEW!”

The sneeze is so forceful he coughs a little afterwards, his eyes watering. His shoulders jerk upwards again, his nose twitching. “hHEH… HEHH… hehH’IITSSCHh-EEW! Ugh… coughcough, you’re right, it’s defidetely… hHEH—!!”

Vincent can only watch, frozen in place, as Yves jerks forward again, burying his nose into his sleeve. “IHHHh’DZschH-IIEW! Snf-!” He lowers his arm slightly—Vincent can see him scrunching his nose up, trying to rid himself of what must be the worst tickle he’s been faced with all night. That thought sends a wave of electricity down Vincent’s spine. “Hh-hHeh-! Definitely the cologne that’s… hh-! that’s… hEHH… setting me… hh… HhEH’IDDzShHH-IIEW!! —off, snf, f-fuck… hh-Hehh-hhEHH’IITTSHhh-IIEEW!” The sneeze explodes from him, barely contained, snapping his entire body forward with the sheer intensity. Yves barely manages a breath in between before he’s doubling over with another: “IIIiDDDzSCHHh-YyiEW!”

Vincent swallows hard. He’s, well, so turned on that he can barely speak. It feels a little like the heat he feels—more of a full-body-flush, at this point—might actually melt the clothes off of his arms. “Bless you.” It’s remarkable that his voice manages to come out as evenly as it does.

He stands, heads over to the coffee table to retrieve a small box of tissues. Takes in a deep breath.

When he gets back to the couch, Yves has cupped both his hands over his nose and mouth. Vincent tilts the opening of the tissue box towards him without comment.

“Thadks,” Yves says, with a laugh. He takes a handful and blows his nose. “I needed those. That was probably ndot the best idea, in hindsight.”

Understatement of the fucking century. Vincent stares at him, disbelieving. “Your first idea after learning you’re allergic to something is to test it out?”

“Scientific rigor, and whatnot,” Yves says. “I had to be sure. Like I said, I’ve never actually been allergic to something before. This was quite the… hHeh-!” He raises the handful of tissues back up to his face, his gaze going unfocused. “Just a sec—hh… hH… hHEH’IIDZSCHh-IIEW! snf!”

“Bless you,” Vincent says. “I guess this answered your question, then.” Yves laughs. “It definitely did.”

“I think you—” Vincent places the tissue box—which is at risk of falling off the edge of the couch—directly into Yves’s lap. “—should take this.” He takes a cautious step backwards. “And I should go take a long shower back in my room.”

Yves looks up at him, still a little teary-eyed. “It doesn’t bother me that much,” he says earnestly. “It’s just sneezing. I don’t mind it.” Just sneezing. Vincent shakes his head.

Yves stills, his expression probing. “Unless…” His voice comes out a little softer, now. Uncertain. “...Unless it bothers you?”

That couldn’t be further from the truth. Not in the sense that Yves means it, at least.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Vincent says. “But I’ve been in your situation before, so I know what it feels like. I… know it isn’t pleasant.”

This information seems to surprise Yves. “You’ve experienced this before too?”

Vincent nods. “Every spring, more or less. I’m allergic to tree pollen.” His face feels hot from the admission—it feels strangely inappropriate to be admitting this, but then again, it’s not as though he’s bringing it up out of nowhere. “You can imagine that’s harder to avoid than a singular kind of cologne.”

Yves’s eyes widen. “That sounds terribly - hhEH-! hH… HEHh’iITSHH-iIEWW! snf-! terribly incodvenient. I can’t imagine having to deal with this feeling for an edtire season.”

“It is. That’s why I don’t want to subject you to this for longer than I have to.” He steps past Yves to grab his jacket from the couch, which he ties around his waist. It will be better for both of them if he leaves now. “I really should shower and get changed. Your symptoms are not going to get better if I stick around.”

Yves seems to be coming around to this. “Sorry to have to end things off early,” he says, frowning. “You came all the way here.”

“It was barely a walk,” Vincent says. “And this wouldn’t have happened if not for me. I should be the one saying sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Yves says, with a laugh. “It was an illuminating experience. I’ll see you, then?”

The possibility is so fleeting that Vincent almost dismisses it. Could Yves really be disappointed?

“I have some Claritin back in my room,” Vincent says, trying his luck, though a part of him recognizes that this kind of confidence is categorically unlike him. “We can resume our night when you can get through two sentences without having to sneeze.” And after Vincent takes care of something else, and preferably spends enough time in his room flipping through boring travel pamphlets and sensational catalogues to get his mind out of the gutter, so he can face Yves again with some semblance of normalcy. “...If you still want to.”

Yves brightens.

“Of course,” he says, with sincerity. “I’ll look forward to it.”