[ Everything about this is...disarmingly normal, though he can't say that he didn't expect as much. He watches the rest of the guests with quiet scrutiny, watches the students chatting amongst themselves about miscellanies that he doesn't have a frame of reference for. Privately, he understands that this is what most people do. Worry about their studies and their social life, instead of looking at their own lives through a kaleidoscope of facts and details that shift with every turn. It doesn't fascinate him as much as leave him feeling cold, twice removed.
His brother flits back and forth between these people with ease, a fish in water. Claude knows his brother hurts in the privacy of his own heart, that he can't ignore the very pressing needs of his humanity in contrast with the pragmatism that he's more than capable of: one day, he's going to have to choose between 'Auguste Aubert' and 'Gustave/Gus', and Claude hopes that that day is also when his brother tells him to go and disappear. It would be fitting.
But. All that aside: when 'Emily' drops one of the strips of paper that she'd been using to make her stars, Claude reaches over and picks it up for her, hands it to smaller hands with a quiet patience that surprises even himself.
(He remembers how it'd been a full year after Gus's birth, that he'd been allowed to see his half-brother: those soft blue eyes, even as an infant. Nothing like him.) ]
no subject
His brother flits back and forth between these people with ease, a fish in water. Claude knows his brother hurts in the privacy of his own heart, that he can't ignore the very pressing needs of his humanity in contrast with the pragmatism that he's more than capable of: one day, he's going to have to choose between 'Auguste Aubert' and 'Gustave/Gus', and Claude hopes that that day is also when his brother tells him to go and disappear. It would be fitting.
But. All that aside: when 'Emily' drops one of the strips of paper that she'd been using to make her stars, Claude reaches over and picks it up for her, hands it to smaller hands with a quiet patience that surprises even himself.
(He remembers how it'd been a full year after Gus's birth, that he'd been allowed to see his half-brother: those soft blue eyes, even as an infant. Nothing like him.) ]
Are you paying for your coffee in wishes?