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The note came through the door the morning after Verso spent the whole of Christmas pretending he wasn't in. The idea was simple: if his friendly-to-the-point-of-nosy neighbours didn't twig that he spent the day alone with only the sound of their laughter through the walls for company, they wouldn't feel sorry for him.
Their card came anyway, its thick card stock adorned with elegant handwriting:
'Dear Verso,
Joyeux Noël! We hope you had a festive day. We're holding a small New Year's Eve party with drinks and food from about eight until whenever we're off to sleep. You're very welcome if you'd like to attend!
Kind regards,
Emma, Gustave, and Maelle.'
Verso smiled and set the note aside with the rest of the post he was ignoring until the new year. Emma wrote that, from the signatures; Gustave's more angular, Maelle's spiked to the point of a scrawl. It was nice, at least, to receive the invitation — they were good people, as best as he could tell. A strange family he occasionally gossiped about to Monoco, but little more.
They'd invited him to housewarming drinks when they moved in next door earlier in the year, and he'd declined on the pretence of a 'business commitment'. This time, he'd probably sit in the dark for the whole of the thirty first and apologise for missing the party when next he saw one of them in the hall, or the lift, or the bin stores.
It was Christmas. He was allowed to be a sad bastard and wallow, if only for a bit.
His undoing, it turned out, was poor groceries planning.
By the thirtieth, he was out of cheese and milk and was scraping the dregs of his last bag of coffee beans. The last two slices of bread in the cupboard were dry, and that wasn't even starting on the state of his fruit bowl. He'd contented himself with the self-inflicted misery of not venturing into the streets in these perennially grey days, but needs must.
He stepped out of the flat and, lo and behold, the lift was broken. Joy of joys and eight flights of stairs down to street level. Four flights down, he'd re-engrossed himself in doomscrolling when noise drifted to him from further down.
"And why do we need this much wine?" Ah; that was Maelle. Verso would recognise her lightly complaining tone nearly anywhere.
"It's new year's, Maelle, it'll get used." Gustave was with her, then. Verso mentally shifted to anticipating a short conversation, which was going to be… well, after several days without speaking to anyone face to face, his small talk probably wasn't at its best.
"Yeah, and then we'll have to carry all the empty bottles down to the bins."
"You never know, the lift might be fixed by then." Gustave's only answer, of course, was a scoff from Maelle.
Down one more flight, he heard Maelle let out a shout and a series of expletives, before the clattering of a series of objects hitting the stairs and, tellingly, breaking glass. Verso held in a sigh, shoved his phone in his pocket, and prepared himself for very much not a short exchange of seasonal small talk.
"It's fine, it happens," Gustave was saying, both of them staring slightly dumbfounded at the mess. Shit, that was a disaster zone, all scattered fruit and a broken wine bottle seeping into the carpet. "Just set the split bag down, I'll— shit, Emma's not in."
Verso leaned against the bannister above the site of the calamity. "Do you need a dustpan?"
Gustave jumped. "Oh, Verso, salut! That would be— yeah, probably for the best."
"Wait, hmm." He popped his satchel open and pulled out another bag, holding it out to Maelle. "I'll be back."
"Thanks!" she called up after him, and he tried to feel like he wasn't fleeing. He'd probably seemed human enough in that interaction.
Verso grabbed the dustpan and brush from the cupboard and dashed back down, where a small amount of progress had been made in tidying up the mess. Glass all over the floor still, but the rest of the food had made its way into the new bag.
"Thank you so much." Gustave shuffled awkwardly, arms still laden down with bags. "We should do… some kind of swap?"
Verso glanced once at Maelle, who was still watching the broken glass warily, and then at Gustave. "That's a lot of bags," he said. Gustave blinked. "Wait. I'll clear up and I can help you take it upstairs."
"No no, you were busy."
Verso offered an approximation of a smile. "I was buying milk. Broken glass is a little more important."
There wasn't much that could be done for the spreading wine stain, but Verso didn't have carpet cleaner, so that was the building management's problem, just like the lift. The glass, however, swept up quickly enough.
"Told you we shouldn't have bought that much wine," Maelle said, picking up her new bag a little more tentatively than Verso imagined she usually carried shopping.
Gustave chuckled. "I suppose we're one down for the party. Hope you don't mind, Verso."
Ah. Yes, the party he'd intended to avoid. "I'm not a big drinker," he said, offering a hand to take one of Gustave's three bags. Gustave handed what was obviously the lightest one over.
Maelle made a faintly approving noise. "At least someone isn't. Maybe you'll be better company."
Verso was fairly certain he was rarely ever described as good company. He was more of a lurker at gatherings. "Are a lot of people coming?" He peered at the bag braced against the elbow of Gustave's prosthetic, which was stuffed with food.
"Not many," he admitted, looking a little sheepish. "Emma likes to do a good spread. No more than eight total?"
"Probably five," Maelle amended. "Six if you come?"
Verso hummed, hoping it didn't sound too much like a negative or an affirmative. When Maelle reached the next landing, she stopped to observe him. Verso was very used to being picked apart by teenagers now he'd been teaching for a few years, but she had uniquely piercing eyes. Familiar, too, but that was just nostalgia talking.
When they reached their floor, Gustave was all flustered thanks. "Sorry again for interrupting your… milk." Maelle snorted. "Thanks for your help. That was an ambitious shop even without the bag breaking."
"No problem." Verso carefully set his bag down next to the door. He really didn't want to go out after this, but he was exactly as lacking in groceries as before. "Bonnes fêtes."
"Bonnes fêtes!" Gustave turned to smile at him again. "Okay, right, Emma told me not to overstep, but you really would be welcome tomorrow night. We'd love to see you."
"Thanks." Verso returned the smile and chastised the lonely hollow in his chest that was very angry with him for spending the holidays alone. Fuck, he was probably going to end up going, wasn't he?
It was about six in the evening on New Year's Eve when Verso realised— with the abruptness of someone who should have considered it long before —that he had no idea what the dress expectations were for the party.
The Leclair family seemed to be moderately well-off, but not super rich. The latter group would absolutely expect Verso to pull out something formal without being asked beforehand, but people like them? They probably would have stated if they wanted him to dress up, but also it was a party. People wore nice clothes to parties.
A message to Monoco confirmed that Verso was experiencing a rich people problem and was probably fine showing up in anything. Still, he swapped from the pyjamas and ratty hoodie he'd been wearing most of the day over to something he would, at least, be happy for a student to see him in. Not fancy, but clean. Presentable. Something a man who hadn't been wallowing for the better part of a week would wear.
After that, the only thing to do was wait. It was absolutely rude to show up early, but the invitation implied arriving and leaving would happen whenever was convenient. Being first to arrive would be awkward, but last would be too.
This, incidentally, was why Verso didn't go to parties.
Instead of fretting forever, he kept an ear out. When he heard noise in the corridor, the sound of the Leclair door opening and someone being let in, he set a five minute timer. When it was up, he pulled on his shoes, grabbed the bottle of cordial he picked up at the shops, and crossed the cavernous gap of the hallway.
From the door, he could already hear the noise of people's chatter. He waited only a moment after ringing the doorbell before Emma pulled the door open.
"Verso, bonsoir." She smiled to him. Her eyes flicked down to the bottle. "Oh, is that for us? You needn't have."
"I thought Maelle might appreciate it," he explained, and her expression shifted.
"Of course, thank you." She took it from him, stepping back into the hallway to let him through. "And thank you for coming. And the shopping, for that matter."
"No problem." Verso stepped inside and toed off his shoes, trying not to look like he was peering around the flat. "This is a little uncanny."
Emma laughed. "I'm sure we have different decorating ideas than you, though. And that you have more space."
"You'd be surprised." Better to stop talking about how he arranged his home sooner rather than later. "You're all in the room next to the kitchen?"
"Yes, go right through." The hallway, still strung with Christmas lights, had several closed doors and one open on the right, leading through to a living room that was, to Emma's credit, considerably more crammed with things than Verso's corresponding room. Two sofas and several chairs clustered around a large coffee table, already laden with food and drinks. This room, too, was absolutely bedecked with lights, and the tree was more light than pine.
Wow, okay. The Leclairs took Christmas decorating seriously.
Every head in the room turned to Verso and Emma as they entered; two familiar faces, one unfamiliar. "Hi, Verso." Gustave waved him over, and Verso wove his way around a desk (stacked with schoolbooks; Maelle's?) and a stray chair to sit on one of the ones set out around the food. "Good to see you."
"Glad to be here." He nodded to the woman across the room; she nodded back. "I'm Verso. I live next door."
"Lune," she answered. "I work with Gustave."
"Lune is the best researcher I've ever worked in a lab with," Gustave amended, and Lune's answering scowl seemed… fond?
"Gustave is the lab's professional doormat," she shot back, and Maelle let out a little bark of laughter. Gustave tipped his drink, already at least a third empty, towards Lune and took another sip.
"Would you like anything?" he asked.
"Just a soft drink for now," he said. Monoco called it a bad habit, but he always wanted to be a full drink behind most of any group.
"Maelle's having lemonade and cranberry juice?" Gustave gestured to the drinks and the handful of empty glasses still remaining on the table.
"Sounds good." He poured himself the drink, but still felt slightly adrift. This always happened when he didn't speak to people for too long; he should have known better than coming to a party. "…did the fruit survive? From yesterday."
Maelle huffed. "It was fine. Some of it was a little bit bruised, that's all."
Lune leaned forward. "Did something get dropped?"
"The bag split," Gustave explained. "Verso helped us tidy up. Did you, um, get your milk?"
"With no disasters," Verso confirmed. He'd put too much juice in his drink.
Emma came back then, saving him from the disaster of more of the rapidly drying pool of small talk before Lune asked him the usual questions shared between adult strangers. "I've put the cordial in the fridge," she said. "It's raspberry, if anyone wants it later. Maelle?"
Maelle cast a glance at Verso. He raised his eyebrows at her. "Sure, later."
"I've had an update from Sciel," Emma continued, taking a seat next to Lune. "She's just about on her way. I'm sure she'll be here within the hour."
"A new record," Lune said, not a small amount of fondness colouring her tone.
"For lateness or earliness?" Verso asked, and the whole room laughed. "Earliness, I take it."
"We shouldn't be mean when she's not here," Emma chided, and the others duly stopped laughing. "But yes. She's usually late for… almost everything."
"Especially things like this," Maelle said. "She was even late for—" Gustave shook his head, and she shut her mouth. "Fine."
"What do you do, Verso?" Lune asked. Damn a conversation that had to be redirected swiftly; of course he'd be the one who ended up as the victim of an easy topic change.
"I'm a teacher," he answered. "Of music."
"Oh?" A small smile formed on Lune's face. "What do you play?"
"Piano," Maelle answered. "You should see it, it's huge."
Verso frowned. "You haven't seen the piano."
Gustave sighed heavily, and Maelle clarified. "Downstairs told us about getting it up here. She said it was so big."
"It's a grand," Verso explained, and very deeply wanted to be next door with the piano in question rather than talking about it with near strangers. "It had to be brought up in parts and reassembled. Practically as expensive as buying it in the first place."
"You teach students on a grand piano from your flat?" And now Lune was amused at him. Did that make him a part of the crowd, or was he about to be the target of mockery that wasn't quite friendly enough yet?
"It's good for anyone, including beginners, to play on a nice instrument." And it attracted clients who wanted a real pianist for their darling children to learn from, though he'd really just wanted it for himself.
"It's a very nice-sounding instrument," Emma said. Verso redirected his gaze to his drink. "You play it well."
"Can't know that's me and not one of my students," he said. "But thank you." How many years, and his father's voice still played in his head in times like this: accept the compliment.
Maelle pulled out her phone, probably bored. Emma looked at Maelle and then at Gustave, who shook his head. Verso watched her roll her eyes and say nothing more.
"You were telling us about Sol's recent exploits, Lune?" Emma prompted instead. Thank god for a diversion.
"There's not much more than I explained," she said, but continued anyway, regaling them with the second half of an anecdote about a backpacking trip undertaken by someone Lune clearly cared about a lot. Verso let the conversation flow past him from there: holidays, several of Gustave's brushes with disaster while travelling, a playful ribbing of Gustave that Maelle rejoined the conversation for, and on and on from there.
Verso was happy to sit in the background. If anyone noticed he didn't have much to say, they didn't mention it. When Gustave started on his second drink, Verso accepted a first, and that was all there was to it.
He was just starting to feel at ease when the doorbell rang. Gustave leapt up this time, halfway to the door before anyone else could shift.
"That'll be Sciel," Emma explained, certainly for Verso's benefit. When the door opened, there was a loud noise of greeting. "Don't be put off."
"Emma." Lune's presumably mock-scandalised tone told Verso everything he needed to know about how genuine the warning was.
Sciel came through to the living room a moment later. "Bonsoir, all!" she waved, immediately making her way to the table to grab one of the cans of beer. "Do I get a hug, Maelle?"
"No," Maelle answered, tapping away at her phone. Sciel pouted and flopped into a seat on the sofa beside Verso.
"And a mysterious stranger," she said, shooting him a bright smile. "I'm Sciel, fellow wayward adoptee of the Leclair festivities."
"Verso," he supplied. "I live next door."
"Oh, the pianist!" Ah, wonderful. They really had been talking about him to half the people they knew. "Good to meet you."
Verso nodded and picked up a cheese roll of some kind, waiting for the conversation to redirect away from introductions yet again. This time, it turned swifter; Sciel was, evidently, the life of many a party, and even Maelle chipped in to ask what she'd been up to since the last time they saw her (which, from context alone, appeared to be less than a week).
"'Course, this kind of thing doesn't slow down just because of Christmas," she said. "I had no idea how many hats and gloves it was possible to hand out in a day."
Sciel was tellingly busy in a way Verso was tellingly not, and he wasn't going to pry for a second; she was sharing plenty enough at the behest of others. Talk of her volunteering evolved into talk of her other volunteering, then the small army of knitters she'd coordinated last month, then puppies. Verso just about followed the logic, and declined a second drink when Sciel cracked open hers.
It had become very warm in the room, packed full with bodies and light and laughter. Verso briefly fought the urge to step away for a minute, then gave in. At the next lull in conversation (awkward, a half-treatise on the importance of helping parents at the NICU that everyone already agreed with), he cleared his throat and every eye in the room snapped to him.
"Is it okay if I use the bathroom?" he asked, and Gustave practically scrambled to explain where it was in a flat with an identical layout to Verso's own. That was fine; still a brief escape route.
He left the once again burgeoning conversation behind him and was immediately hit by how much cooler it was out of the living room. He sat down on the toilet lid and leaned forward, putting his head between his knees. Was the alcohol starting to hit (he'd only had one glass, it couldn't be), or had he just spent too long alone to handle the onslaught of five strangers and near-strangers in a room?
Verso didn't let himself sit and breathe for too long; someone would wonder where he was. He used the bathroom quickly and, not quite prepared to go back, went anyway. Excusing himself early was always an option.
Sliding back silently into the conversation was easy enough, for a time. They were halfway through something about aeroplanes when he returned (Gustave, complaining at length about pollution; Maelle chipping in with a factoid about private jet usage by a pop artist he'd heard of chiefly from students), which moved swiftly to commutes.
"Must be good working from your flat all the time, right?" Sciel asked, turning to him in what had to be a friendly attempt to include him.
"It's convenient." In more ways than one, and some of them probably not all that good for him. "I do leave the building. For exam accompaniment, usually, or sometimes to do home lessons." Did that make him sound like a shut-in? Too late if it did.
"You don't go anywhere for performances?" Gustave asked, in a tone Verso had become very familiar with. Parents sometimes asked why he didn't let himself stand in the spotlight.
"He says he's not available for them," Maelle said. Verso swallowed down the surprise but clearly didn't entirely succeed. "What? You have a website."
Verso chuckled, and it didn't sound all that convincing in his ears. "I do. And you're right, I'm not."
"Please stop prying into our guest's professional life," Emma said; Maelle pulled a face at her.
"You're the one always telling me that things you put on the internet are forever," she grumbled.
"Well, yes, but not to drag out at gatherings." Maelle huffed in response to that and, aptly, returned to her phone.
No one made a pointed attempt to include him directly in the conversation after that, which was fine by him. Verso listened as it shifted back to commutes (Emma's university commute, which had been over an hour each way when she was a student), then what Maelle was thinking of studying (she shrugged, and Gustave shuffled the conversation on rapidly). They moved through everything with no end to the familiarity between each other; each tidbit of life shared was known to at least one of them.
It was simultaneously comfortable and disorienting — he'd been invited into a home of strangers who were all friends or family to each other. They weren't trying to make him feel like an outsider, but Verso was very good at doing that one for himself.
When the hour grew later, Sciel stood for a cigarette; Gustave followed her downstairs, and Emma excused herself to the bathroom. With just three of them, Verso felt rather exposed.
"I play guitar," Lune said, rather abruptly. Over the last hour, she'd turned quite flushed. After she spoke, she blinked down at her drink.
"I do too, a little." The way her expression shifted after that, Verso wondered if he wasn't tipsy enough for this conversation.
"I wish I did it more," she continued. "But I always tell myself I don't have the time. Too busy with work."
"I know the feeling," Verso lied, because he was fairly sure that was the kind of sympathy people were looking for. He'd heard plenty of it from students. "It's worth making time."
Lune pulled a face, opened her mouth, and then shook her head. Not something she wanted to share, then. "Maybe in the new year."
Verso thought, generally, that resolutions for new year were thoroughly pointless. The things he wanted to change were never going to change, and he'd made it that way. "You should, if you like it."
Lune nodded. "Yeah, I do." She looked down at her drink again. "I should swap to something weaker, or I won't make it home."
"You could sleep on the floor," Maelle offered.
Lune's smile sharpened again. "What, on your bedroom floor?"
"No." Verso wondered if she ever grew tired of being on the receiving end of so much teasing. When he…
He shot an accusatory look at his mostly empty second drink. Back to lemonade it was, then.
"The rest of us are too old to sleep on the floor," Lune said. "We're not young anymore, not like you."
"The sofa's plenty comfy." When Maelle said that, Lune directed her gaze back at Verso in an expression that conveyed nothing more or less than thirties kinship.
He was glad, though, when Emma returned, and Sciel and Gustave shortly afterwards. He really wasn't made for this kind of thing.
The clock flowed forwards as surely as conversation, and it wasn't long before Gustave went around the flat to turn off all the lights and opened the curtains, waiting for the fireworks to begin. Emma poured everyone a new drink, wordlessly handing him cordial instead of everyone else's champagne.
"Thanks," he said, and she just smiled slightly.
The others crowded around the flat's biggest windows, looking out over the city. It was alive with light, thousands out on Lumière's streets, preparing to bring in the new year.
Maelle was the one who got the countdown up on her phone, calling the intervals out over everyone else's chatter. Everyone joined in with ten seconds to go; the first fireworks started with five, and then the cheering rose from the streets as the show began in earnest — a riot of light and colour to hail the turning of the year.
"Bonne année!" It felt good, saying it in chorus with all the others, glasses raised in a cascade of chimes.
Sciel went in first for a kiss on Lune's cheek, then made her way round to Emma, Gustave, Maelle. She paused only for a moment before she planted one on Verso's cheek too. Then she slung an arm around Lune's shoulder, dancing vaguely to the music blaring from the streets below.
Everyone was laughing. There was a lightness even in Verso's chest, something he'd almost forgotten how to feel. His cordial wasn't diluted enough and he'd eaten too many chocolates and he was overstimulated to the sea and back and it didn't matter, because he was with people who'd cared enough to ask him to be here.
He caught Maelle's eyes, and she smiled. She opened her mouth to say something, but got cut off by Gustave's arm falling heavily around her shoulder, pulling her close in a half hug. She smiled more widely at him, of course, and whatever she'd wanted to say went forgotten.
The noise in the room, the lights in the skies above Lumière; all of it continued, waning and intensifying seemingly at the same time. Verso was wired— they all were, three topics floating around the little Leclair living room at any one time. Thank yous and well wishes and at least one set of spontaneous tears filled the air, none of it showing any sign of slowing down.
"I'm headed out," he said, not quarter of an hour later. He was starting to flag and didn't want to deal with whatever came once someone noticed.
Maybe he said it quietly on purpose, but the room was loud with overlapping conversations, and no one seemed to hear. That was fine. He slid back out into the half-darkness of the hall, then their shared corridor, letting the buzzing warmth of their presence fade into the background.
Happy new year. Verso knew well enough what it would look like, of course; for him, nothing ever really changed.