#apprentice vishal

anatole & vishal: ‘childhood friends to lovers’ meets ‘love found, love lost, love found again’. quiet looks you give that person you’re smitten with when you think they aren’t looking, sometimes when they’re looking at you too because of how much you love them. it’s quiet nights with wine under warm candlelight, and home made food. that one person you’d go to hell and back for, because even if no one else understand how or why, you think you have never met another person who deserves more chances than this one, or the man who’s in front of you in his golden light alone redeems humanity. it’s love that reconciles and gothic mansions, three pieces suits, solving puzzles and matching cravats, as well as the realisation that your first love was meant to be the love that would change your life forever.

vishal is @thelazaretmakesmesad‘s.

anatole & august: it’s mika’s tiny love and happy accidents. having the first taste of something and discovering you want to have another taste, and another, and another, until you discover you want to be drowned in it. it’s feeling the same thing and being on the same page but asking for confirmation. it’s the delight of the achievement of making your partner laugh. keeping each other grounded and keeping each other human. it’s fussing over the one’s you love and playful dates where you swat each other’s hands to see who pays the bill because you just adore spoiling this one person. is taking care of them, and being taken care of in return. it’s the realisation this is how love is supposed to be like — like an exploding supernova out of which everything is made new, because you somehow know there is not a version of you who would not love this person.

august is @froyofam‘s.

anatole & andrico: love found, love lost, love found again. leap of faiths and being blinded by the admiration you feel for your significant other. it’s healing together. it’s second chances after roads which shouldn’t have been that hard, but they were — yet you wouldn’t have had it any other way in the long run. it’s being marvelled at their existence and the chances and choices that took them to you. it’s meeting each other in the middle and lace over satin and hands ghosting over your skin. it’s the orange hues of sunrise and the purple sunsets. but also, outdoing your partner out of pettiness. it’s self discovery and remembering how pleasant it feels to smile. it’s holding someone else’s hand in times of hardship and fighting for what’s right. it’s building a home and deciding to stay in it.

“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life” (The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde)

May I interest you, @arcana-dumpsterfire, in some Vishal/Anatole? Please I swear I have a point here, bear with me.

Vishal is, of course’s, @thelazaretmakesmesad‘s.

Also yes, this is a Coco AU. Also, so this makes sense, Vishal is mexican, and he’s also colourblind. He has tritanopia aka blue-yellow colour-blindness.

* * *

“Ven para acá,” Anatole whispered as he sat on the floor moving Vishal as little as possible, gently laying his head on his lap. His skull lined up with sun as it rose, making all of him sparkle. “What colour do you see me, mi amor?”

“Red, of course, the sky has always been red.”

“Never blue?”

“Que es rojo, te digo.”

Both of them giggled. A few feet away from them their family watched, flabbergasted that someone as dignified, mysterious and impenetrable as Papá Aelius so vulnerable, but them, the both of them, together at last, did not care. It was just like they had first fallen in love all those years ago.

“I am so sorry, I shouldn’t have ever left you, Anatole.”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have leave you to oblivion… you’re being forgotten because— because,” he couldn’t finish the sentence, a sob threatening to overtake him. He does not cry in public, he has never done, and he is not about to begin now.

“Because you’re stubborn?”

“You left me,” he whispers, almost inaudibly, “you left us, and you took my dreams with you,” despite himself, he feels a tear roll down his cheek, Vishal gently rubbing it away with his thumb. “You left, and took my happiness with you and it never returned— silly little me used to dream you’d come back with flowers and—“

“See, corazón? You still love me.”

“Don’t interrupt me.”

A light glow rattled Vishal’s bones, as he hissed in pain. Anatole clutched his hand, feeling a lump in his throat. What a fool he had been, he should’ve looked into it, he should’ve gone after him, or perhaps with him. But Anatole knows he cannot change the past, he knows he does not regret his choices. He did what he had to do, with took their child, his broken heart and carried on, hoping that the storm would clear eventually, that the sun would shine again on him.

In a way it did, carried on with his duty, turned it into new dreams, and lived in his own way. He never turned back, such was his way of living. Still he know looks at his husband and wonders on hypotheticals he cannot control, on chances long gone now.

He still remembers when he first met him. His mother was friends with his mother, and Vishal had surprised him by playing his guitar along with his piano, one day that they were visiting. Even then he wanted to be a musician, he used to say he’d write songs about Anatole and how great a Statesman he would be, songs about his beauty even. The Vishal of the past had blushed when he had confessed how pretty he thought he was, and blushed even harder as Anatole kissed his lips for the briefest of seconds.

Ever since they were inseparable, even when their families turned on them, they took each other’s hand and carried forward, ever singing, ever bright, helping the people far and wide. The world would be their family, they used to tell each other, as Vishal sang, and Anatole took a minor position in a municipality of some forgotten town.

All those years he had been carrying such grief, such anger, such bitterness weighing him down as he pretended that everything was alright, that he was over him. He had never been over him, he could never love anyone who wasn’t him. Now, partly because of Vishal’s own mistakes, partly because of Anatole’s bitterness, he would have to carry on without him again. This time, he did not want to.

“What will be of me if you are forgotten, I don’t think I can live another life without you,” Anatole said.

“In that case, cariño mío, if you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”

“You shouldn’t let me sleep this late,” he bleats half heartedly, but huddles closer to Vis. “I’m too asleep to think, but yes,” he still hasn’t even opened his eyes. He doesn’t want to pry himself away from him, but he does want pancakes, so he supposes the sacrifice is worth it. He sits up, stretching with a whine.

“Pancakes and coffee? A lot of coffee and an aspirin for your Anatole who keeps thinking he can will away his low alcohol tolerance?” He doesn’t feel to bad, but the back of his head does hurt.

He’s going to say something else, something cheeky about whatever he wants, but then he lays eyes on the sweater and he just laughs. “You know you can ask people what colours are things, right? That’s so horrible, it’s literally hideous, and it’s fantastic, I’m framing it. I’m putting it in my office.”

He turns to Vishal, laughter still lingering on his lips as he leans forward to kiss him, a hand settling on his thigh and the other on his ribs. “We’re the same age again now, most dearest.”

He kisses him again, and then the corner of his mouth too. “Please, for the love of everything you deem sacred, brew me some coffee.” He watches him leave after he agrees on it, biting his lower lip and smiling at the pleasant sway his hips have always had. He eyes curiously the pile of presents, going over them.

One of them makes him smile wickedly.

“Darling?” He yells from the bedroom. “What was that about doing anything I wanted afterwards?”