Work Text:
It’s 1982. Daniel’s wedding is a pleasant, lively affair. Neither his nor Alice’s parents are in attendance, his because he hadn’t bothered telling either of them that he was getting married, hers because they didn’t like Daniel all that much, but they have friends around. Alice’s friends, who didn’t understand any of the things Daniel wrote his books about, who didn’t understand why Alice was willingly giving up everything to be with someone like him. Daniel’s friends, who hadn’t spoken to him in years before 1980, congratulating him on landing someone as beautiful as her because they knew nothing else about his life or hers. Before the ceremony, Alice had done a line off the table with her bridesmaids, Daniel’s expired library card from 1977 still between her thumb and her index finger as she brushed the residual powder from her nose using the back of her hand, and she had laughed and laughed and laughed as one of her girls fixed her hair in the mirror. High, and terrified at the prospect of getting married to someone like Daniel.
She isn’t interesting. Armand has turned her inside his head—every memory about a mother whose wedding lehenga hadn’t fit Alice since she was fifteen, every memory about a father who still didn’t know what she did for a living, every fleeting, fading memory about a house in Lucknow she no longer remembered anything about save for impressions, every memory about a mediocre, unfulfilled adult life first in India and then in Birmingham and then in Manhattan—and he still can’t figure out what it is about her and her trite, tiresome existence that Daniel loves so relentlessly. Louis, when Armand had made the mistake of voicing this the one time they had spoken of it, had given him a look, like he knew something that Armand didn’t, and said, it’s not for you to understand. I doubt he ever understood why you loved me, too.
He understood, Armand had told him, because it was always the easiest thing in the world for Daniel to just know him. Daniel understood the way he loved Louis, like their time together was ice in a glass already turned to water even as he lingered, like he had gotten used to starving for something he’d never get from the cradle of Louis’ hands a second time. Daniel had understood it so much that he had been jealous of him for it. Armand would always have Louis, perhaps in pieces and perhaps like a blade to the palm of his hand, but for all his desire and all his fascination, Daniel hadn’t had Louis at all. You’re you. I’m not sure what she is, if I’m being honest.
They’d been standing across the street from Daniel and Alice, watching them share a cigarette as they waited for the bus. Their shoulders were touching, and when Daniel laughed at something she said, it filled the hollow spaces of the stretch of the city between them the way light fills the sky at dawn. Louis swore it was a coincidence, but he had these whims sometimes where he wanted to see Daniel and he wanted to see what he was doing for the night, just to reassure himself that he’s living the life that Louis had saved for him and that he’s living it well. It hadn’t surprised Armand that they’d ended up here. The anger had been sudden all the same. At Louis and at Daniel, and then at himself. They watch Alice, the silhouette she cuts in her long trench coat and the high-waisted pants, both in black to contrast the pure white of her shirt and the gold of her necklaces. The way her hair is curly and her eyes are the color of the night sky. The way her heels put her a good four and a half inches above Daniel. And Louis—Louis who loves him, still—says, I think she’s supposed to be you.
It had been him who told Armand about the wedding, a few months after they got home and stopped dwelling on the past. The anger had been sudden then too, a fist being driven into his sternum, and he was reminded, swiftly and with the edge of a bite in it, what it had been like, waiting for Daniel to fall asleep the night he took away his memories. Louis had suggested that they go, and Armand had wanted to anyway, so they’re here together, Louis nursing a whiskey at the open bar that he won’t drink, his back to the crowd on the dancefloor, and Armand watching Daniel and Alice’s first dance.
Louis taps his arm. He looks lovely tonight, and his eyes are brilliant under the bar’s light. He’s as beautiful as he is in the memory that exists in Daniel’s head, of the first time they met at Mary’s. The glimmer in his eyes, the smoke curling in tendrils around his lips, the way he smiled as he said, I did a terrible thing, once. He smiles, and it’s lined with sweetness. “You bored?”
“An unreasonable amount,” Armand says. He’s not, and he knows he’s not. Louis knows, too. He could spend every day for the rest of his never-ending life chasing the shape of Daniel’s shadow and it wouldn’t bore him. He drinks whatever is left in his glass and it tastes like chalk in his mouth. Sometimes, he thinks he’ll always be trying to chase down the taste of Daniel’s blood in his throat, with Louis and alcohol and prey, and it will still find a way to linger on his tongue for as long as he lives. “Weddings are long, dull affairs. I don’t see the appeal.”
Louis passes him his untouched drink, and Armand downs it in one shot. “Let’s go home, then.”
“Alright.” He doesn’t particularly want to stick around and listen to Daniel talk about how it had been love at first sight when he saw Alice at that rooftop bar, the one that made him feel like a class traitor and had one of the best martinis he’d ever had the pleasure of sharing with a beautiful woman. He kind of wants to kill him for it, all this talk of love at first sight and the rest of his life with Alice. Kind of wants to kill him for how good he looks without the burden of being loved by Armand. His suit fits him nicely, and he still has traces of wine red lipstick on his face where Alice had kissed him all over his face. When he smiles, it still makes him look younger. He’s almost thirty now. Nearly a decade has passed since Armand saw him at Mary’s for the first time, young and bright and half in love with the idea of living forever.
Louis stands up and Armand offers his arm on instinct. Louis smiles as he takes it and the bitterness recedes. I love you, he thinks, as if it will make this loss burn less.
I love you, too, Louis thinks. Squeezes his arm. And then they’re walking out, unnoticed among all the love and life in the party, and that’s that.
They wait by the doors for the car. Louis lights a cigarette just to give his hands something to do, and when Armand is done adjusting his gloves, Louis passes it to him, and they share it, the way real lovers do. Back and forth until it runs out, and the next time Louis reaches for one, Armand lights it for him, and smiles when Louis murmurs, thank you, sweetheart, through a mouthful of smoke. The lights in the building’s porch are burned out. All Armand sees of him is a set of green eyes and the orange-gray of the ash burning at the edge of the cigarette. He’s lovely, and he’s Armand’s to keep. Louis passes him the cigarette. He takes it. Their fingers brush together, and Louis smiles.
The door swings open behind them, and long before he sees and hears the unsubtle sounds of heeled shoes on tiles, he feels who it is. Louis’ hand tightens on his arm involuntarily, but Armand makes no move to move out of the way, and Louis makes no move to pull him closer either. Alice collides into his shoulder in the dark, hard and fast with a startled sound somewhere between a yelp and a gasp, and he lets go of himself long enough to stumble forward slightly, letting Louis stabilize him even as the cigarette in his hand goes flying down the stairs.
She’s horrified at committing a social blunder, and then she thinks, ah, fuck, a perfectly good cigarette gone to waste. She blinks at the two of them, still a little shaken, and he dips into her mind just long enough to see how she perceives them. Two men in the dark outside a wedding hall, sharing a smoke, fingers brushing occasionally. The cufflinks on Louis’ shirt, the golden cuff in Armand’s left ear. Their eyes, one set near pitch black and the second set a vivid, jewel green. Louis won’t let go of him even as she glances at the precise spot where his fingers are closed around Armand’s forearm. She’s wondering if they’re friends, or if they’re lovers. She’s thinking that they look good together, lovers or otherwise. For some reason, she’s thinking about Daniel, who likes men too, and she’s thinking, Dan would love this. He’s pleased to detect a sense of bitterness in it. So is Louis, if the way his lips tick upwards is any indication.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, mortified. Her veil is a little lopsided and her lipstick is smudged. She’d kissed Daniel for the photos that one of their friends took. First on the lips and then on the nose and then all over his cheeks and his forehead, both her hands holding him in place as he went red in the face, breathless with laughter. They’d laughed so much together, high off the adrenaline of being married and the fucking cocaine both of them loved so much, and Armand had hated to linger on the memory when he saw it in Daniel’s mind, but he had. “Are you quite alright? Fuck, I could’ve knocked you over.”
“You really couldn’t have,” Louis says, amused. She’s British, he thinks, loud enough for Armand to hear, and he’s disdainful and unimpressed. How interesting. “Are you alright, miss? Don’t usually see brides running out of wedding venues in such a hurry.” He smiles, a shark’s smile meant to unsettle her, and she thinks, dear god, he’s gorgeous. “Marriage not all it’s cut out to be?”
“Nothing like that.” She laughs. It’s bright and bubbly. When she waves a hand dismissively, it’s the hand with the ring on it. “My husband is just forgetful.” She gets a little thrill from saying it. My husband. They’ve been married for a total of four hours, and it won’t last. Not with the way Daniel poisons anything that loves him, anyway. She glances at Louis and Armand, and then at the cigarette burning out on the stairs. “I’m sorry about your cigarette.”
“It’s quite alright,” Armand says. She thinks, he’s British, and the corner of her mouth ticks upwards into a smile. Up close, he supposes he can see why Daniel thinks she’s beautiful. Her skin is golden, like the sun had loved her relentlessly and kissed her skin until she was glowing, and her smile reminds him of the first time he and Louis had seen a meteor shower together. “No harm done, really. We’re just glad you’re alright.”
Liar, Louis thinks, fondly.
“Well, take this anyway,” she says, and reaches in her clutch for a pack of Newports. He pictures Daniel’s library card from 1977 in between her index and middle fingers, dusted with cocaine. He pictures her hand in Daniel’s, her hand curling into the hair at the base of his neck as he kisses her. She flips the carton open and holds it out to Armand, smiling with her eyes. “An eye for an eye.”
“Ah, we couldn’t,” Louis says. She’s too nice to be married to an asshole like Danny, he thinks. It bores me. I can’t imagine how it will bore him later.
“Yes, you can,” Alice insists. Her eyes are like supernovas. “It’s just—I feel bad, you know. I should’ve been watching where I was going, and I didn’t, so now I’ve probably ruined what was a perfectly good evening.”
And isn’t that ironic? An evening. That’s what she thinks she’s ruined. An evening. A perfectly good evening, she says. Every day she has loved Daniel and been better for him than Armand was is a burden he has to bear alone. In time, this will calcify and he won’t remember how fresh this bruise is, how much it stings to know that leaving Daniel was for the best. It had felt like this in those terrible days after Louis had told him that he’d never make it up to him in Paris. Like the pain would make itself a home and live with him forever, like he’d never forget what it was like, letting the loneliness ache. Maybe one day, when enough time has passed, he will think about Daniel the same way too. Like he’s a boat in the harbor passing by, and it won’t hurt so much, remembering that it happened and that it was real. But for now, time passes strangely for him, and it’s like it was only yesterday that Daniel was his to keep, that he had held him and loved him and given him everything in his hands.
“Thank you,” Armand says, and plucks a cigarette out of the carton. He smiles at her and he thinks about her husband’s eyes, the way they’d crinkle when he smiled. Her husband, who had been his Daniel first, who had said, I think you might be the most real thing I know and meant it. His Daniel, whose love is a slow-working poison Armand will have to tolerate everyday for the rest of his immortal life. His Daniel, whose love is a relentless burden that exists only for him now. “It’s kind of you to offer.”
“It’s no trouble,” Alice says. She smiles, and it makes her look younger. “You two have a good one.”
“You too.” His hands are shaking. His hands are shaking, so he hands the cigarette to Louis, who turns it in his, and attempts to flex the tremor out of them. His voice is a birdbone, hollow and vacant on the inside, and he says, “And congratulations. You make a lovely bride.”
“Congratulations, miss,” Louis echoes. He squeezes Armand’s hand in the dark and there’s a frisson of something across the bond that ties him to Armand. A hitch, like a string being pulled tight, and it feels like heartache. It feels like sorrow, and it feels like regret. It feels like love.
Alice thanks them, a subtle blush high on her cheeks, and then she’s walking down the stairs with a wave and a ring on her finger. He watches it catch the yellow light from the streetlamp, and he hates Daniel all over again, viciously and without forgiveness.
She’s barely disappeared into the line of cars parked across the street when Louis pulls him in. Loops an arm around his waist, tucking Armand close to him the way children hold the strings of their helium balloons so they don’t go somewhere they can’t follow. Rests his head against Armand’s shoulder, inhales like he’s human and his lungs still work. Louis feels sorry for him. The initial rush of relief Louis had felt the day he came home with the rain still in his hair and said, it’s done, I’ve set him free, was followed by a horrible, terrible kind of sympathy that made Armand bristle, even as Louis held him close. His kindness grates, some nights. His love makes Armand feel wretched when it’s like this. And it’s still all he has. A decade from now, it is all he will have, and he will be all Louis has, too.
On the palm of Louis’ hand—the cigarette Armand had plucked out of Alice’s pack of Newports. The white of its body in the dark. An extension of Alice’s good heart.
Happy fucking wedding day, Danny, Louis thinks, and then he drops it at his feet and brings his boot down onto it, quick and painless.
fin.