Archive of Our Own ^beta

Fantasio was fidgeting with his hands below the table. His leg bounced up and down almost as fast as his eyes, darting between the same 3 things: the clock, his food, and…

“Hey! Hey, Fantasio, are you listening?” His best friend Spirou was snapping his fingers in front of him. Finally, his attention turned to someone else. 

“Um,” Fantasio gulped, letting himself drift from Spirou’s narrowed eyes to the table next to them. “No, I wasn’t.” Spirou crossed his arms and sighed.

“Well now I am!” Fantasio chuckled nervously, stealing another glance from the table behind the redhead. Spirou followed his gaze to the object that was stealing his attention. Once he put two and two together, he didn’t know whether or not to facepalm or give his friend a knowing smirk. He’s been doing both many times as of late, but he’s also been bordering on frustration more than he would like. 

“You just can’t let him go, can you?” The redhead rolled his eyes. 

“I-I just haven’t seen him in a while. That’s all. And seeing him now, he looks…different.” Spirou scoffed, knowing Fantasio’s behavior meant more than that. 

“Of course he looks different, Fantasio. We’re at a wedding. People dress up for weddings.” He looked behind himself again, turning around just in time to catch Gaston crack a joke and make everyone else in the table burst out laughing. He couldn’t tell if they were laughing at or with him, but the young man seemed pleased anyway. Fantasio was right; he almost looked like a different person, with the way he was dressed for the occasion. The dimmed blue lights of the venue bounced off of his dark hair with a silver sheen, the gel maintaining a neater version of his usual hairstyle where he kept his bangs down over the side of his face. Spirou noticed that he had applied some lip gloss to his usually chapped lips. Fantasio would like that, he thought. 

It wasn’t his face that drew his best friend’s eyes, he realized. It was mainly the suit, and Fantasio had his opinions about suits. It was dark green, a lot darker than the green of his sweater. The color accompanied the suit’s smooth, seamless fabric in a way that made him look 20 times more than what he was actually worth. 

One of Gaston's male friends came up to his table, and the young man immediately rose from his seat to give him a warm hug, saying something along the lines of ‘you made it’.

Behind him, Spirou heard Fantasio gulp down a glass of water. He looked at Fantasio, then back at Gaston, and it had registered that from this angle, they were in perfect view of his ass. Spirou observed, and he supposed that the dress pants hugged his behind very nicely. The friend was a bit taller, so when he lifted his arms to hug him, his blazer rode up a bit to reveal the white dress shirt tucked under his pants, showing how tiny his waist was. 

Judging from the way Fantasio clutched the table, he was probably wishing he were those pants right now. Or at least the person receiving the hug. 

“Hey smart guy, why don’t you just go up to him and say hi? You look like you’re about to explode,” Spirou remarked with a chuckle. 

“I-I…” Fantasio leaned in, a pout forming on his face. “I don’t know. I feel like I’ll fall back into bad habits.”

Right. Back when Fantasio actually worked at least 2 days a week in the office, Gaston was…a distraction, to put it mildly. He wondered if Fantasio smoked his pipe less than he relieved Gaston’s, if you catch his drift. 

“You’re paranoid. It’s not like you’re going to walk up to him and bend him over the dinner table in front of everyone—“

“Gah!” Fantasio exclaimed, burying his face in his hands. “Don’t. Don’t put that idea in my head,” he muttered into his arms. 

“You’re being dramatic. Just go.”

“It’s not that I can’t greet him. I just don’t want to.” 

“But you do.”

“I don’t!” 

Spirou was starting to feel bad. “Okay, fine. You don’t,” he surrendered. He knew how complicated it was. That came with being attracted to a mechanical genius who also happened to be an idiot. 

Fantasio stopped covering his face to chance another look at Gaston. He looked happy.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” he muttered as he forced his gaze away and rose from his seat. 

“While you’re at it, could you get some more croissants?” Spirou requested, ignoring the frustration in Fantasio’s voice. 

“Fine.” 

~~~~~~~~~~

Spirou was talking to his other seatmates at their assigned table when Gaston approached. 

“Hey, Spirou! How are you? I didn’t expect to see you here!” Gaston leaned down for a small hug, and Spirou drew in to accept it. 

“Yeah, I’m great! I didn’t expect to see you here either. We were invited because we met the bride on one of our adventures.” He relaxed back into his seat as they pulled away. 

“Oh really? I was invited because I helped the groom with his fences once. It’s a small world, isn’t it?” His gaze drifted to the empty seat next to Spirou. “Fantasio’s here too, isn’t he? I thought I saw him here. You did say ‘we’, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Spirou supplied with a glint in his eye. “He went to the bathroom.” 

Gaston took a breath, his chest visibly rising and falling. “He did?” 

“Yeah.” Spirou didn’t know what to make of it, but it looked like there were gears turning in Gaston’s head. 

“Okay, thanks for letting me know! I was just uh, going to go there too, actually. It was nice seeing you, Spirou!” He waved him off, heading towards the same direction Fantasio went. 

Spirou had a feeling Fantasio would forget to bring the croissants. 

~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, great. Speak of the devil. 

Fantasio ran into Gaston just when he was leaving the bathroom, because of course he did. He bit his lip at the well-dressed man who stood casually in front of him with his hands in pant pockets. He looked way too good in that suit, more than he deserved. And he probably knew it.

They greeted each other and made small talk while curious blue eyes shamelessly raked over the slender body hidden beneath that luxurious dark green suit. At some point, the conversation trickled into silence, and for Fantasio that was an invitation to really take in the sight. He walked around Gaston in a full circle, trying not to leer but failing miserably. He got a good look at his ass before he returned to face him. God, even just staring at him felt too greedy. Gaston stood in place, appearing vulnerable as his posture shrunk and he started to fidget with his hands. It was hard not to feel self-conscious when your senior colleague was circling around you like a vulture. 

“I like your suit,” Fantasio said, stepping in close and running his hands through one of the lapels. The fabric was as smooth as it looked. “Tom Ford? Louis Vuitton?”

“Brioni.”

Fantasio’s eyes widened. That was a bit more on the expensive side. There’s no way he could afford that. 

“I got it from my aunt,” Gaston added, as if he had read Fantasio’s mind. “She said she bought it long ago, but was saving it for special occasions like this.”

Fantasio stepped closer, slipping a hand beneath the blazer to run his fingers through the white dress shirt. Gaston visibly tensed. 

“Where’s the shirt from?” he quizzed. 

“Eton.” 

The older man hummed, satisfied. In the back of his mind, he wondered how Gaston even knew the brand. He doesn’t seem like the type who would know. Out of habit, he leaned in and gently rubbed his face against Gaston’s jawline, inhaling the scent of expensive cologne, and grimaced. It was a bit too strong for his liking, but that was a given for any cologne. He found himself missing the younger man’s natural scent dearly. 

He heard Gaston gulp. Fantasio continued questioning him as if his breath wasn’t literally touching his neck. 

“It looks like it hasn’t been touched. Has this ever been worn before?”

“Uh…no, brand new. It’s my first time wearing it.” Fantasio placed a small kiss at a spot below his ear, and Gaston gasped. “…It’s also the first time I’ve been invited to a wedding, so…”

The blonde laughed against his neck. “Ha! Not surprising. You’re not exactly the type of person that people would want to invite to their weddings.”

Gaston pushed him off, an incredulous look having crossed his face. 

“You really think so?” he asked, the sting apparent in his voice. It stung Fantasio too, but he tried not to show it. He was still learning to hold his sardonic tongue around the sensitive boy. 

“W-well…uh, no, I don’t,” he sputtered, itching to get his hands underneath his shirt. He drew in slowly, testing the waters by reaching for his waist under his blazer. Gaston didn’t pull away, which was a good sign. “I just meant that, since I haven’t seen you decked out like this before, I assumed that you didn’t like showing up to these occasions?” he tested with an awkward smile.

Gaston didn’t seem placated, but he didn’t seem unconvinced either. “Yeah…I have mixed feelings about events like these. I mean, the food’s great, but the thought of wearing an uncomfortable suit and having to fit in with all those fancy people…” 

Fantasio removed one hand from his waist to cradle his cheek. He lifted it slightly, making him look into his eyes. “Hey. We’re not at some…company dinner party. You don’t have to worry about stuck-up executives here. Also, you seemed to be enjoying yourself back there.” 

Gaston shrugged. “I guess. I’m still getting used to the suit, though.”

Fantasio smirked, leaning in to touch foreheads with Gaston as he kept eye contact. “How about I help you out of it?” He licked his lips.

Gaston blushed furiously, but he didn’t turn away. “I missed you,” he mumbled.

Fantasio’s heart clenched.

“I missed you too.” It seemed like the perfect time, so he drew in for a kiss. Their lips barely brushed against each other before—

The bathroom door swung open, and both men recoiled from each other as if they had been burned. Fantasio turned to the mirror, pretending to fix his hair (which he ought to do, he realized, spotting a few stray tufts that escaped the hair gel), and Gaston simply whistled. That idiot was just making them look more suspicious! 

When the man walked past them and went into a stall, Gaston grabbed Fantasio by the arm, who was still in the process of fixing his hair.

“Wait, I actually have to—“

“Your hair will get messed up anyway,” he whispered. “Follow me, I know a spot.”

Fantasio’s eyes darkened, and he let himself be led. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Fantasio came back to the table with his hair a little more tousled than before and his belt buckle looking like it had been put on too hastily. More notably, he didn’t have a tray of croissants with him. 

Spirou kicked him out of their table again so he could go get them this time.