Chapter 37 – The Desperate Man

I know exactly where I am when I appear in the next painting, without having to open my eyes.

The smell is engraved in my mind. I think that if I ever smell it again once this curse ends, I'll crumble in tears.

I open my eyes.

Gustave is looking at me, standing a few feet from me.

I'm back. I'm really back. He brought me back again. I didn't know you could feel joy and pain of this level at the same time before.

I want to say his name, I want to tell him that I love him, I want to do something, anything, but I can't move.

Gustave doesn't have that problem. He says, "I'm so sorry about this, but stop me if you don't want to," and he walks right up to me, grabs the back of my head and crushes his lips against mine.

I stumble back, surprised by his kiss. My back hits the door.

Yeah, I'm not stopping him.

I wrap my arms around his neck, bringing him closer to me.

I think Gustave might not have been sure on how I was going to react to him kissing me, and the fact that I'm not pushing away makes all his worries disappear as his body melts against mine.

He keeps a hand behind my head, his fingers brushing through my hair while his other hand wraps around my body keeping me close.

I'm sandwiched between his body and the door.

I want to wrap my whole body around him.

He's kissing me like he thinks I might disappear in any seconds because I might. I could. I have no idea what kissing Gustave will do.

Because this is true love's kiss.

It's ridiculous. It doesn't make sense. It's impossible.

But it's true.

The moment his lips touched mine I knew.

This is true love's kiss.

This is how it's supposed to feel when you kiss someone and you truly love them.

Also, he's a tremendous kisser. His lips move with confidence, coaxing mine to move in a feverish rhythm.

I wonder where he learned to kiss like this.

My hand is in his brown hair that falls at his shoulder. I squeeze him even tighter against me.

I think I'm crying. I'm pretty sure tears are falling down my cheeks. I don't know if it's because I'm sad or happy or a mix of both.

Our kissing slows down, his lavishing lips nipping gently at mine.

            We stop kissing. Gustave's forehead is pressed against mine.

            I open my eyes. I wasn't the only one crying.

"Hi," I say, looking in his warm brown eyes.

"Hi," he answers, smiling back at me, his hands caressing my cheeks.

I smile a little, keeping my hands pressed delicately around his jaw. "So, what do you know, the fire of Saint John's Eve really did help the witch to get to the right place."

Gustave frowns with a smile, confused by what I just said, "What?"

"My last painting," I say, like that explains everything.

His nose lightly touches mine. We're still a breath away from each other. He still has a arm wrapped around my waist. "You smell like salt water and smoke. Where did you come from?"

"A bonfire on a beach," I tell him.

"Have the paintings been... difficult," he inquires, worried.

"Surprisingly, they went fairly well, all things considered," I admit.

And it's true, the paintings have been a little bit less gruesome lately. If I had time for it, I'd wonder what it means.

"Did you miss me?"

I chuckle. "Oh, not one bit, I was not obsessing every single second about how I'd manage to get back to you. Speaking of which," I start, "were you in Prussia in 1832 with your father on top of a mountain, and did your dad shoot at a girl and did she die?"

"This feels very specific," he says, amused.

"It is, there was a kid named Gustave in another painting, I didn't get to see his face right," I explain to him.

This kind of bothered me. It had been too much of a coincidence. And the dates sort of worked.

He shakes his head. "It wasn't me."

"That's weird."

"Gustave is a common name, my heart, it is not that strange," my Gustave informs me.

I drop the issue. Maybe it really was just a coincidence. Or maybe the paintings just wanted to mess with me a bit more. "What were you painting to bring me around this time?"

"Oh, I've been painting a lot of things..." Gustave trails.

I look behind him. There's a painting about done of Gustave lying at the bottom of a tree, with his arms wrapped around a girl. She looks an awful lot like me. We're both sleeping.

I take one tentative step towards the painting, out of Gustave's arms, pointing at it. "Wait, is that us?"

I look back at Gustave and he's kind of blushing, a hand going at the back of his head. "Yeah, I figured that if I painted it, maybe I could magically transport myself back again to that day with you and you could wake up in my arm instead of in some other random paintings. I've been thinking about that actually, painting you when you're here to keep you longer."

I take his hand in mine, and smile at him. I love this man. "You're really the planner in this relationship."

He laughs. "And you're the fire hazard."

I grin back. "I'll keep you on your toes."

He laughs again. "So, I'm guessing this is the one," Gustave adds, pulling me towards another painting.

It's a portrait of him.

Wow.

This looks like him. This really looks like him, so much so it's eerie, because it's not like a picture, it's clearly a painting of someone but it's a version of him so close to reality that I'm slightly unsettled. The little details, like the muscles and tendons on his hands, his eyes, the eyebrows, the lips... it's him.

            "Do you like it? Does this look like I'm posing again?" Gustave asks behind me as I stare at the painting in awe.

            "No... this is real. This is a hundred percent you," I tell him softly.

            "You think so?"

            "Oh yes. And I love it," I tell him. I really really do. The portrait before, it... it wasn't him, not really. It was a polished version of him. This one... I can feel it in his eyes, the feverish desire he has, why he made that painting, what he's waiting for. It's all there.

            "Thank you."

            I smile at him. "I love it and I love you."

            He's surprise be the words. "What?"

            He deserved to hear it, to know how I feel. "Might as well say it. We kissed, so if the curse ends after that... well I don't want to regret anything. I love you Gustave Courbet."

            "Finally," he says, lifting his arms in the air like he's thanking the heavens for that.

            I give a little slap on his stomach. "Seriously?"

            He laughs, grabbing my hand and brings me in his arms again. He brushes a strand of hair off my forehead. "I love you too Melody Orsay."

            I press a chaste kiss to his lips and I wrap my arms around him, while he tucks my head under his chin.

            We stay like that for a minute before we let go of each other again.

            "So, you like the painting? No suggestions or critiques?" Gustave says, kind of lighting up the mood.

I grin like a child with an evil plan. "I want to add a mustache."

He snorts. "What?"

"I want to give you a mustache, like I have this deep desire to add you a mustache the way people vandalise billboards or posters and give people mustaches," I admit, chuckling. It's like a kneejerk reaction, wanting to do something you know you shouldn't do, like touching a painting.

Still laughing, Gustave grabs a brush and hands it to me. "Here you go."

I frown and laugh. "What?"

Gustave is grinning. "Give me a mustache."

"I can't. No. That painting is way too nice. It legit looks like you."

He's still grinning, still amused. "Give me a mustache, come on, I know you want to," he coaxes me.

"Yeah, I really do," I admit, chuckling.

He touches his chin and cheeks covered with a five o'clock shadow. "Should I start growing one?"

"No, just keep the stubble."

He shakes his head not agreeing. "Too late now, you gave me the idea. I'm doing it. Draw me a mustache and I'll grow one."

            I laugh. "Fine you grow a mustache. Now tell me how I'm supposed to paint without destroying your painting."

            Laughing too, Gustave takes a piece of paper and a brush and using paint that was already on a little platter starts to make small lines, like he's going facial hair.

             He explains to me how to do it, guiding my hand now and then, and I do about a dozen fake mustaches on the paper before I'm even slightly ready to do it on the real canvas.

            "I'm scared," I admit standing in front of the painting. I will ruin it. I will a hundred percent ruin it. Me and my stupid mouth.

            "Don't be."

            "I don't want to ruin it."

            "It's okay, I can always paint over it if you do an awful job."

            "Alright... here goes nothing."

            While Gustave sits on a stool behind me, I start painting. I keep looking back at him now and then at the beginning making sure I'm not doing something absolutely wrong, but Gustave just keeps urging me to continue, a small smile on his lips.

            After a little while, I stop looking back and I kind of get in the zone. I'm actually having fun. I give him a goatee too, just because I don't want to stop painting. I don't know if it's because this is Gustave's face and it feels like I'm doing something illegal and it's amusing, or because I genuinely like painting.

            The second option is very scary.

            "I think I'm done now," I say looking at my handy work. It doesn't look catastrophic. Gustave will be able to fix it later.

Gustave takes my hand and pulls me in his arms, still sitting on his stool, and kisses me. I stand between his legs, wrapping my arms around his neck. We're eye to eye. Gustave hooks his ankles behind me, keeping me trapped.

I don't ever, ever want to leave this painting and I want to keep kissing Gustave forever.

He stops kissing me. I won't be here forever.

"I don't think kissing me is going to stop this curse by the way," Gustave suddenly says, like he's thinking about the same things and worrying about the same things that I am.

"You don't?"

"No, as much as my kisses are obviously transcending," he teases "I think it's when you'll learn something specific, what the paintings are trying to teach you, that the curse will end."

"I don't think the curse is trying to teach me anything."

            "Come on," he chuckles, "think about it."

I humor him and do. The message this curse is trying to teach me feels like it keeps changing. "Lately, with the people I tried helping that kinda backstabbed me, it feels like the paintings are telling me that you can't help people that don't want to be helped."

"So, what do you take from that?"

"It's telling me that I can't help everyone, that I need to focus on myself first?" He gives me a weird little smile, like I'm amusing child that totally don't get it. "What? Spill it. Obviously, you think it's something else."

"I don't know, how about other people aren't always the problems. That no one can help you if you don't want help first. That you need to want it. You need to want to change, and to better yourself in order to even begin to make progress."

I shake my head because that's too much retrospection for my liking. "Nah, I don't like that, I prefer cutting toxic people out."

Gustave pouts a little, like he's thinking about something serious. "That's good too. I'd like your word that you'll cut all ties with that Jarvis bastard."

I narrow my eyes, like I'm confused. "Jarvis who?"

He smiles, a cocky smile. "Yeah, that's right"

"But I don't know about what the paintings are telling me," I tell him, going back to our conversations.

"What did the boy say again? In the first painting, about never resting..."

"Because you burned art without consideration for it or for the artists, Melody Orsay, you are condemned to roam from one painting to another, never resting until you understand the weight of your actions and the importance of art." I repeat like the words are not my own, because they are not.

            Gustave claps his hands. "See, it's not about kissing the right guy. It's about understanding the weight of your action and the importance of art."

            I back away from him a little, feeling something strange in my chest. "Let's not talk about this more okay? I don't want to figure out the answer, because when I do..."

            "You won't come back..." he finishes for me.

            "Yes... I won't come back," I repeat.

            And not coming back to him... that will break me. I don't know how I'll survive it.

How can I care so much about him? How can he mean so much to me? This is just the fourth time I'm seeing him. How can my connection with him be so strong that seeing him three times was enough o fall completely, irrevocably in love with him? It's not right.

"I'd prefer just kissing you and not thinking about anything else, is that okay with you?" I tell him, because when I give all of this too much thought, it makes me want to hyperventilate.

"No arguments from me," Gustave agrees.

"I can't believe I have a thing for an artist," I say, kind of like an afterthought, "Don't all artists have a thing for tragic life stories?"

Gustave laughs. "Don't worry, I'm not a dramatic life story kind of artist, I'm an annoyingly arrogant artist, we're two very different types of people."

"Speaking of tragic live stories" I say, remembering something important, "we need to talk about Vincent Van Gogh."

Gustave raises an eyebrow. "A suitor of yours?"

I shake my head. "No, he's an artist, but like, he's going to live a miserable life and people are going to make fun of him and he's going to kill himself and you need to find him and convince him that his art is actually really good and that in my time, his paintings are worth millions of dollars. He's a big deal. He has a bunch of exhibitions. Everyone knows Starry Night, " I ramble.

Gustave looks at me with weird eyes. "You want me to save a struggling artist?"

I'm feeling a little defensive. "Yes."

"Okay, where is he?"

"He's Danish," and then I add, "and he's not born yet."

"Vincent?"

"Van Gogh."

"And you want to save him?"

"Yes, because his story is too sad! He cuts his ear because he has tinnitus. And he's probably just bi-polar. In my time, he could get the right medication and the help he needs. He just needs help. He just needs to know it's okay not to be like everyone else."

"Tinnitus? Bi-polar?" Gustave repeats, not understanding the words.

"Medical terms. All explainable things," I tell him. We're still bad with mental illnesses in my time. He wouldn't know about it now.

"And if someone feels alone and rejected by everyone else, you want to make sure they know it's not true, because you know how that feels...?" Gustave trails.

"Shut up."

"Uh huh," he nods, "And here I thought you didn't want to think about anything and you just wanted to kiss me."

"Shut up," I repeat

"It's nice to know you care so much Miss Orsay," he says with a smug grin.

"Shut your beautiful mouth," I say again.

"Only way to do that is to kiss it, my heart."

He doesn't have to ask me twice. I grab fistful of his shirt, on both side of his waist, while I close my eyes and press my lips against his again.

Gustave holds my face, his lips moving with mine, nipping now and then, tongue teasing.

He smells like paint and mint and Gustave.

He stops kissing me, and smiles at me, his hands going on my hips. "Come on, let's go for a walk, I can't keep you cooped up inside all day long. That'd be a boring painting."

I have a couple of ideas how to keep us occupied while cooped up inside, but I don't say it. As much as Gustave as implied that people in his time are not prudes, I don't want to do anything wrong.

I don't even know if like kissing someone you're not promised to is super scandalous. If people know that he kissed me, is he going to get in trouble, or like judged?

I have no idea how judgy and religious people are in his time.

"Here, I have a new dress for you," he tells me, opening a wooden chest and takes out a new dress, this time it's lilac. 

"I don't think anyone's ever gotten me as much clothes as you have," I admit, looking at the cute dress. It's very similar in style to the one he's given me before, just in another colour.

Gustave smiles, kissing my nose. "Dressing you up is my second career."

"Doesn't it cost a lot of money?" I ask, while I look at the dress, touching the soft fabric.

He shrugs. "Don't worry about it."

"Aren't you a struggling artist?" I ask, genuinely worried. He shouldn't be wasting his money on me.

"No, I'm a bourgeois' son. And I have a good father," he says, like that explains it all.

"Oh, so you're a trust fund baby," I tease him.

"I guess I am, whatever that is."

"I got myself a rich boy." He chuckles at my comment. I continue talking. "So, real talk... will you get into a lot of troubles for being with me even though we're not engaged or promised or whatever."

"Has it ever looked like being with you has ever been a problem for me?"

"No but... if you get caught kissing me, are you going to be shunned by society?"

He laughs. "I'm an artist in Paris. I'm not a Count from the high-class society. My parents are bourgeois," he explains, "We're not in Queen Victoria's England, we're in France my heart. Liberty, equality and fraternity... I'm big on fraternity," he adds with a leud grin.

I stop worrying. If Gustave says it's okay, I'll believe him. I just don't want him to get in trouble because of me.

So I get changed quickly, king of hiding in a corner. I run a wet cloth on my face and neck quickly in lieu of a bath.

We take off, walking in the streets as the sun is setting, hand in hand.

People are walking around, hurried. I like looking at the buildings and trying to figure out which ones are up to codes. Gustave points to places, trying to explain to me where we are and telling me anecdotes about people living in the houses we walk by.

"I'm hungry, let's go eat somewhere," Gustave suddenly says, after we've been waling for a little while.

I follow him. He looks like he knows where he's going. It's such a nice thing, to have someone I can trust in these paintings.

It's also a strange thought to have. These paintings. I had kind of forgotten for a second that this... wasn't exactly real.

When we turn a corner, there's a kid standing there in tattered clothes. "Hey, kid, do you know how to get to the Grand Véfour at the Palais-Royal?" Gustave asks him.

The kid nods and starts explaining the fastest route making big hand gestures.

"Thank you," Gustave tells him with a big smile and puts a coin in his hand.

The kid runs away holding the coin like he has a treasure in his hands.

We start walking again. I'm curious. "Did you not know where you were taking me?"

"No, but that kid needed money and I didn't want him to feel like a beggar," Gustave explains.

I smile at him. I don't deserve him. "You're a nice man Gustave Courbet."

He shrugs, his cheek reddening a little. "It's like Rousseau said, people in their natural state are basically good. I want to be a good man. And I don't think it's right for a nation to have people with enormous amount of wealth when other people are starving."

So, in the grand scheme of thing I know that people haven't always been asshole. I know that just because we have records of people in the olden days being awful and judgy doesn't mean everybody was, but Gustave just doesn't make sense. He's never judged me, made me feel like I was inferior to him, he clearly wants equality and he's kind of liberal in his point of views. It's destabilizing to meet a man like him in a time like this. "I doubted it for a second, but now I know that this is all fake because you're too perfect and that just doesn't make sense."

He laughs. "Thanks for the compliment, but do you want me to insult some passerby to convince you that I'm real?"

I laugh took, shaking my head.

We keep walking and talking.

Suddenly when we're in front of our destination, Gustave points to the building on the other side of the street. "We're too late to visit the Louvre," he says.

I frown. "Wait, that's the Louvre?"

"Yes."

"Where's the glass pyramid?"

"What glass pyramid?"

I throw my hands in the air. Gustave laughs. "Are you shitting me? The glass pyramid hasn't been constructed yet? You have no Eifel tower and no glass pyramid? Am I really in Paris?"

He's still laughing. "Yes you are my heart."

He keeps calling me that. His heart. I don't exactly hate it...

We head to the building that's way too fancy to be a tavern or a pub. I thought that's where we were going.

But once we got inside I realize we're in a proper, fancy restaurant.

They sit us at a table and we're given menus and it's all so... normal, like so similar to the way it would feel to be in a restaurant in my time, in my real life that I kinda want to cry for some strange reason.

"Are you okay?" Gustave asks me, seeing the change in me.

"This feels... like oddly familiar and if I stop to think for a second this could all feel like you're back with me in my world," I explain.

"Restaurants are a treat," Gustave says happily.

I smile at him. I love this man. "They are."

"And a lot more tasteful than a tavern, though if you want is to go get drunk and play checkers later, I'm totally up for it."

"Totally up for it too."

We order our food, we eat and we drink and we laugh and we talk.

I feel like I'm on a very good date, which is weird because I've never actually been on a date before. Jarvis never bothered.

Once I feel like I'm going to explode from all the food, we go walking again.

We go back to the little tavern where Gustave had brought me once. He knows everyone and he jokes with the people there and we drink more wine and play checkers.

When the sun is about to rise again we walk back to his studio, and I try to teach him songs for us to drunkenly sing, like Eye of the Tiger.

Before Gustave opens the door to his place he turns and looks at me and says, "This isn't going to end like the last time we were drunk together, right?"

I smirk at him. "Oh no."

"Oh no?"

I reach behind him and open the door and push him inside. I kiss him like I should have kissed him that other time.

We knock things off tables. We bump in a chair. My hand goes to his shirt, pulling the bottom out of his pants. His hands goes to the lace at my neckline, pulling on the string keeping it closed.

With sloppy kisses and furtive hands, we giggle as we knock into more things until we actually both stumble and Gustave ends up falling down on his ass.

We're both laughing like idiots.

"Maybe we shouldn't have been drinking," he says, still sitting on the ground.

"You're probably right."

"This might be the universe telling us to slow down, and since you've been worried about my virtue, we should probably oblige," Gustave says.

I laugh. I don't argue.

I want more and I don't want anything else. I'm just trying to let myself be happy in this moment. I've had a wonderful day.

Nothing is going to ruin it, not even or impending separation. 

I offer Gustave my hand and help pulling him back on his feet.

"Shall we dance instead," he asks me with a smile.

He doesn't wait for my answer, and places one hand on my back and another wraps around my own hand, while he softly leads us into a swaying dance.

I lean my head against his chest.

I'm thinking about a song that always made me happy when I was younger and start humming it.

"What are you humming?" Gustave whispers in my ear. I feel tingling chills.

"A song my grandmother used to sing to me when I was younger," I tell him.

"Can you sing it?"

Singing drunk song together in the streets is one thing. Serenading to him alone in his apartment is another. "That's soooo cheesy," I admit, hiding my face against his shirt, "but I'm drunk so sure." I clear my throat. "This magic moment, so different and so new" I start to sing.

My grandmother loves the Drifters and she always used to play This Magic Moment after doing something that made her happy like playing in her garden.

When I'm done with my song, Gustave starts to hum lullabies his mother uses to sing to him.

We dance until I start to feel like dozing off.

"Sleepy?" Gustave asks, when I've basically stopped moving because I'm on the verge of falling asleep. It's like he's been rocking me to sleep.

"No, never," I said.

He brushes a hand through my hair. "Come on," he tells me and never letting go of my hand, drags me to his bed.

We both lay down, like the way we did back in the forest, my ear against his chest, his arms around me.

I'm still holding one of his hands. I look at it, brushing my fingers against the tendons. "I love these hands, these artist's hands."

He kisses my hand in his and presses them under my throat. "I love this heart, this courageous heart."

I don't want to cry, but I feel like crying. I don't want to fall asleep. I don't want to leave. "This just feel so wasteful. I don't know what we're supposed to do. I don't want to leave. I don't want to lose you,"  I tell him in a whisper.

He kisses the top of my head. "Don't worry, it's okay, I'll bring you back again. I'll keep painting and you'll keep coming back."

"Not if the curse ends."

"It won't. Not yet at least."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not letting it. If you don't come back to me, I'll burn the goddamn Louvre." He's joking, I know he is, but his certainty that I'll come back makes me feel hopeful.

I smile a little. "I'm a very bad influence."

He does too. "You really are."

"I just want to see you so many times that I don't remember how many paintings it's been. I want us to be together so often that I can't count the days," I admit.

"I want you to appear so many times that I get annoyed with you. I want to have to tell you to come back another time because I really need to start painting and stop playing," he tells me.

"I want your apartment be so familiar that it feels like home." It feels like I'm saying my will or my last wishes, like I'm about to die and these are the last things I want. I hate the feeling. I hate the urgency and the worry and I hate not knowing if I'll ever see him again.

I feel like throwing up and I don't think it's entirely because of the alcohol.

"We're asking for too much, aren't we?" I say, my eyes filled with tears.

"Probably," Gustave says, his too.

"Gustave Courbet, you're too good of a man to be true, but I still love you with all my heart."

"Melody Orsay, you're the sun in my sky. I'm fine with living in the dark, but I miss you when you're gone, like a piece of me is missing. Come back to me and make me whole again."

            With tears in my eyes, I pray to any god that can hear to let me come back to him.

            I snuggle in is arms, my head tucked under his chin. I kiss his neck this time, and fall asleep, my lips pressed against his skin.