Chapter Text
The office tower of Dessendre & Co. stood sleek and unshakable in the heart of Lumiere's art district, a monolith of glass and brushed steel. Gustave adjusted the collar of his secondhand blazer, checked his reflection in the gleaming elevator doors, and reminded himself—he needed this.
The lobby was a cathedral of light and modernist art: sculptures floated on invisible wires, abstract projections played across the walls, and a pale scent of lavender clung to the air. He checked in with the receptionist, who gave him a once-over and typed something briskly into her monitor.
“Top floor,” she said. “Mr. Dessendre will see you now.”
The elevator was fast. Too fast. Gustave barely had time to gather his thoughts before the doors slid open with a soft chime. The top floor was quieter. Warmer. Still modern, but softened by velvet furniture, gold accents, and floor-to-ceiling windows that bathed everything in white-gold sunlight.
A door at the end of the corridor stood open.
Inside, the office was minimalist but lived-in. A polished wooden desk, sculptural bookshelves, and a canvas on the far wall—half-finished, wild with color. Behind the desk sat Verso Dessendre.
He looked younger than Gustave expected. Maybe early thirties, like himself. Dark curls pulled into a loose tie at his nape. A charcoal shirt, collar open, sleeves rolled. He looked up, pen stilled in his hand.
“Gustave Leblanc?” Verso asked, his voice smooth, almost tired. “Sit.”
Gustave obeyed, the chair more comfortable than expected. He placed his resume on the desk, but Verso didn’t reach for it.
“You have an engineering degree,” Verso said, glancing at him instead. “Two, in fact. Why apply to be a secretary for an arts conglomerate?”
Gustave hesitated. “I need the job.”
Verso arched a brow, but not unkindly. “Honesty. Good.”
He leaned back in his chair, studying Gustave with an intensity that felt more like he was analyzing a structure than a person.
“Do you know who we are?”
“Yes,” Gustave said. “Dessendre & Co. funds artists, galleries, theatre productions, experimental installations. You're basically Lumiere’s arts patron.”
Verso smiled faintly. “That would be my father. I must admit I don't have quite the eye for it as he does.”
Silence stretched. Gustave resisted the urge to fidget.
Verso finally asked, “What do you think of art, Mr. Leblanc?”
“I think it’s necessary. Even if I don’t always get it.”
Verso nodded slowly, tapping his pen against the desk. “And loyalty?”
Gustave met his gaze. “You’ll have it. As long as you treat people like people.”
Another pause. Then, Verso stood, walked to the window, and spoke without turning around.
“This job is not glamorous. You’ll be my shadow. You’ll handle the meetings I don’t want, shield me from the people I can’t stand, and know things no one else is supposed to. It’s long hours. Odd requests. Sometimes emotional damage.”
He looked back at Gustave. “Still want it?”
“I need the paycheck,” Gustave said simply. “The rest, I’ll handle.”
A beat. Then Verso walked back, extended a hand.
“You start Monday.”
The first few days were a blur.
Gustave arrived early, left late, and took notes on everything—Verso’s schedule, preferences, phrases he used with clients, the exact way he liked his coffee ("Not burnt. And not pretending it's dessert."). It was overwhelming. Not because the job was too hard, but because Verso Dessendre wasn’t anything like he expected.
"You're not laughing. That was a good joke," Verso said on day three, glancing up from his tablet as Gustave organized the incoming project proposals.
"I’m working," Gustave replied, without looking up.
"So you're saying my sense of humor interferes with productivity. Brutal. Cel would probably agree with you,"
Verso wore tailored suits like armor, but shed the stiffness of them in his posture, in his grin, in the way he leaned on the back of the couch in his office like he owned not just the company, but the air around him. When clients were present, he was sharp and effortless, all poise and calculated grace. The moment the door shut behind them, he turned into something else entirely—offhand, dry-witted, almost annoyingly personable.
It made Gustave uneasy- feeling off kilter even as he walked through his apartment door.
Gustave and Maelle's apartment was a two-bedroom, third-floor walk-up in a weathered brick building with ivy creeping up the sides. The windows are tall, with smudged panes and slightly crooked blinds that Gustave swears he’ll fix “next weekend.” A faded green fire escape clings to the side, often used by Maelle to sneak out and read when it’s warm.
A small, slightly sunken couch faces a scratched-up coffee table covered in engineering magazines, empty mugs, and the occasional art zine Maelle leaves behind. There’s a scuffed-up bookshelf in the corner, half-packed with old textbooks from Gustave’s university years, manga volumes, and a framed photo of the two of them from when Maelle first moved in. A modest secondhand TV sits on a mismatched stand, cords slightly tangled, next to a console Maelle uses way more than Gustave admits he does too.
The kitchen is open to the living room, narrow but organized—Gustave’s handiwork. Sticky notes line the fridge, some reminders, some doodles from Maelle, and the occasional passive-aggressive sibling note.
“I don’t get it,” he muttered one evening, back home in the cramped but clean apartment he shared with Maelle. “He acts like some kind of... flirty golden retriever when nobody’s watching. Then five seconds later he’s a wolf in Armani.”
Maelle, in her socks and hoodie, was halfway through an iced tea and barely looked up from her sketchpad. “Maybe he’s just... I don’t know, human?”
“No one that rich is that human,” Gustave grumbled, flopping onto the couch. “Today he told me to stall a client for ten minutes, then showed up with coffee for both of us and said, ‘Needed a walk. You looked like you might murder someone.’ Then he actually made me take a break.”
Maelle laughed softly. “You do get that ‘about to murder someone’ look.”
“And don’t get me started on the interns,” Gustave said, rubbing his face. “They act like the walls are soundproof. They are not. I had to listen to one of them argue about the ethics of neon paint for an hour.”
“Your job sounds entertaining.”
“It’s hell in a glass tower,” Gustave said. Then, after a beat: “...But I’m paying down a quarter of my student loans this month.”
Maelle smiled faintly. “Then hell’s not too bad.”
He stared at the ceiling. “It’s weird, though. Verso. He’s... not what I expected. Not a jerk. Not fake. Just—strange. Unpredictable.”
Maelle didn’t look up. “Maybe he’s what happens when someone grows up with too much money and just... decides to be decent anyway.”
Gustave snorted. “If he’s decent, it’s on a delay. He’ll joke with you, then turn around and gut a pitch in under thirty seconds. He's like—like a cat. Looks lazy, is secretly calculating your demise.”
Maelle raised an eyebrow. “So... you like him.”
Gustave sat up. “No. I tolerate him. Big difference.”
Maelle just hummed and kept sketching, and Gustave could feel the back of his neck burning. He wishes he could blame it on sunburn.
Gustave leaned back again, staring at the ceiling, and muttered, “Still weird, though. Like he’s wearing a suit over a hoodie and no one can see it but me.”
By week two, Gustave had found a rhythm—and, mercifully, a few people in the office who didn’t make him want to throw himself into Lumiere River.
Sciel worked in project operations and had an easy, unshakable energy. She never seemed flustered, even when the artists she coordinated with were two months late and three times over budget. She had a messy bun, chipped nail polish, and the kind of laugh that made you think she’d worked three jobs at once and still found time to tell a joke. Gustave liked her almost immediately.
“You ever notice how the sculpture in the lobby looks like it’s judging you?” she asked him in the break room, sipping on a mug that read ‘This Is Not Coffee, This Is Survival’ .
“Every morning,” Gustave replied. “It knows my sins.”
Sciel nodded, dead serious. “You should see it after quarterly budget meetings. That thing starts glowing red.”
They laughed, and it was the first moment Gustave felt like he wasn’t trapped in Verso Dessendre’s charming maze alone.
Then there was Lune.
Precise, quiet, sharp-tongued Lune from analytics, who always wore sleek black and moved like she had no time to waste. Her hair was always brushed- with a pretty french braid laced in it, and she took notes with a fountain pen that looked antique.
“Leblanc,” she greeted him on his fourth day in a tone that sounded more like a question than a hello.
“Lune,” he replied, wary.
“You filed the invoice report under the wrong fund code.”
He blinked. “I did?”
“You did.” A pause. “But the effort is appreciated. You’re the first secretary in three hires to attempt it without being told.”
Gustave stared at her, unsure if that was an insult or not.
Then she added, dry as dust, “You’ll get used to the chaos. Just don’t ask anyone in marketing to explain anything with metaphors. They get emotional. And make sure to take your break.”
Strangely enough, that was how they became work friends.
The three of them—Gustave, Sciel, and Lune—sometimes shared lunch breaks when they could. Sciel told stories. Lune added with the observations she had seen- like Alan from marketing looking like a startled deer in front of his whiteboard with writing that looked more like glyphs than sentences. Gustave mostly listened, glad to not be the only one trying to survive.
Still... sometimes, when Lune and Verso crossed paths in a meeting or hallway, Gustave’s eyes flicked between them before he could stop himself.
They had similar humor. That dry, surgical wit that didn’t need volume to land. Verso would say something offhand—“This proposal reads like a novel no one asked to write”—and Lune would nod, completely unbothered, and respond, “So should we return it with footnotes or a mercy rejection?”
It bothered Gustave. Not in a real way, but in a way he couldn’t quite name.
He caught himself thinking, Do they get along because they’re alike? Does Verso—
And then he stopped. Every time. Stuffed it down, boxed it up.
Nope. Not going there.
Back in his apartment, he recounted the whole “Lune and Verso moment” to Maelle with increasing annoyance.
“They do that thing where they’re not even trying to impress each other, they just... vibe. Like some weird power-sibling duo. And then he turns to me and says something like, ‘You’re unusually quiet today, Gus,’ and I’m just—what do you even say to that?!”
Maelle sipped her drink. “You’re jealous.”
“I am not. ”
She raised an eyebrow. “Okay.”
“I’m not! I just—” He threw his hands up. “I don’t know. He’s too friendly. I can’t read him. It’s exhausting.”
“Sounds like you’re already reading him more than you want to,” Maelle muttered.
Gustave pointed a spoon at her. “Stop being right. It’s infuriating.”
Maelle just grinned. “Tell Lune I said hi. I like her.”
He sent Lune a text in the group chat Sciel had made. Lune sent a peace sign.
Verso Dessendre was a contradiction wrapped in cashmere and silver cufflinks.
Every time Gustave thought he had a handle on him, the man did something to tip the scale. One moment, he was all business—meticulous, poised, his words sharp enough to cut through overstuffed proposals like a scalpel. The next, he was lounging half-sprawled on the office couch, tie loosened, recounting how he once talked a gallery owner into funding a fire-juggling performance because he “liked the chaos of it.”
It drove Gustave mad .
There were days Verso would speak to clients with the kind of elegant detachment that made him seem ten feet tall. Then he'd turn around, hand Gustave a protein bar with a raised brow and mutter, “You skipped lunch again, didn’t you?” like he hadn’t just eviscerated someone in a five-thousand dollar suit.
Gustave found himself watching too closely. Trying to decode him.
He’d started keeping mental tallies.
- Days Verso wore all-black: unusually focused.
- Days he wore something with color: likely to joke, more relaxed.
- If he hummed while reviewing documents: good mood.
- If he asked for coffee twice before noon: bad mood.
- If he called Gustave “Gus” in a voice just a little too warm: danger zone.
None of it helped. The man was still unpredictable.
At one point, Gustave tried to bring it up with Lune.
“He’s... complicated,” he said, organizing reports in the conference room.
Lune didn’t look up. “He’s consistent. You’re just looking at the wrong patterns.”
That annoyed him. Mostly because she was probably right. Sciel gave him an encouraging thumbs up.
Back home, he vented again—feet kicked up on the coffee table, head back, talking into the void while Maelle painted in the next room.
“He laughed at his own email, ” Gustave said. “Who does that? I gave him a proposal breakdown and he just said, ‘Oh wow, you really hate the arts, don’t you?’ and then smiled like he hadn’t just insulted my whole life.”
“You do hate the arts,” Maelle said absently.
“I don’t hate the arts. I hate mismanaged funding and self-important performance pieces made out of recycled plumbing.”
“He is funding those, you know.”
Gustave groaned. “I know! That’s what makes it worse! He’s smart. He gets it. But then he acts like none of it matters and it’s all just some big, glittering joke.”
Maelle peeked around the corner, paintbrush in hand. “Maybe that’s how he stays sane.”
Gustave didn’t answer right away.
Eventually, he muttered, “I wish he’d pick one. Either be the charming rich boy or the ruthless CEO. Not both. It would be easier to work with”
Maelle cocked her head. “Maybe you’re the one struggling to choose.”
He didn’t respond.