Chapter Text
Being single was nice, mostly.
Not quite like it had been “nice, mostly” in the early days of Paris. At least this time he wasn’t running from the scene of a crime, hiding from his own betrayal, the murder (however justified) of his lover. Wasn’t standing on a walkway freshly paved over rotten foundations of guilt and grief. No. This was more like… gardening, maybe. Unpleasant metaphor, never did like the feeling of dirt under his nails, and there was something foul in the earth to be sure, but he could work with that. Plant the right crops, treat it the right way, and something fresh would start to grow. Something honest.
But part of growing something honest was being honest with himself. Which meant admitting that it was only “nice, mostly.”
Then there was the part that hurt. The emptiness.
Louis wasn’t sure sometimes whether it was Armand he missed or if he just missed not being alone. Perhaps Armand had only ever been a lump of clay, amorphous, interchangeable, just filling a void. Perhaps Louis just missed the feeling of a body in bed next to him, the knowledge that there was someone he could rely on to handle things when he was tired. Could be anyone.
But in other moments, when his mind was too quiet to drown out the screaming inside of him, he was forced to admit that he missed Armand. Missed him so much it made his teeth ache. His strange insights, his occasionally shocking anecdotes, his whispered secrets in the coffin at night. His rare and lovely laughter. His blood, warm and ripe with age and mystery. His fingertips, tracing patterns on Louis’ skin. How he could so beautifully and thoroughly tear a person down, humiliate them without them even noticing until hours later. How he would then scamper over to Louis, grinning like a mischievous child, to let him know that the target of their ire had “only just figured it out; he’s on the train right now, furious, imagining how he might have retorted had he only noticed, and oh, this will eat at him for weeks!” How he could watch the same stupid movie again and again until Louis wanted to have every copy on the face of the earth destroyed. How he absolutely never managed to understand tachisme or lyrical abstraction, but could talk for hours about nearly every established movement within figurative art. The way he’d somehow manage to visibly blush sometimes when Louis looked proud of him. The trust he’d placed in Louis to heal his wounds.
That contemptibly smug look on his face during arguments.
That thing he did with his tongue.
That he still, in spite of everything, believed in God.
Sometimes Louis just tried to pretend that that Armand had been that replaceable lump of clay. It was easier that way. But that honesty part—it still ate at him. He wanted to live honestly. He wanted to be different.
So he found himself, on occasion, digging through the dirt in his mind. Piecing together scraps of information from his life with his erstwhile companion. Conversations, arguments, instances of silence, and moments that, with hindsight, could almost-but-not-quite have been confessions. But confess to what? To having toyed with Louis’ memory? To caging him, controlling him like some miserable domesticated animal? Or to Armand’s complicity in the trial, in the murder of his daughter? But Louis had already known that part, to a degree, and wasn’t that just the most sickening bit! That Claudia’s death hadn’t been enough to turn Louis away entirely. That it wasn’t until he found out Armand hadn’t saved him…
Hatred swelled again. The dark pigments of self-loathing mixing with the bright, visceral colors of rage. It smelled like burning linseed oil.
Siting on the concrete steps of the reading room, Louis breathed deep and pushed his feet deeper into the rocks. He didn’t want that hatred in here anymore. It made him unable to look up to meet the sight of his brother’s eyes or his daughter’s dress. And there was little else to look at in here, these days.
He missed that damn magnolia tree, too. It had been a beautiful thing, regardless of the rest.
Perhaps when he finished sorting through the memory of his marriage, the screaming would stop. Perhaps then he wouldn’t miss it at all.