A/N: Goodness gracious I am REALLY SORRY but this nagging little plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone.
Warnings: Morally ambiguous but non-sexually-explicit dealings with PEDOPHILIA/SHOTA, sexual situations involving a minor, vaguely dubious consent, and brief interludes of heterosexuality. (Yes, that's a warning.) If ANY of this squicks you out, feel free to hit the back button. If not, continue on.
Disclaimer: Kuroshitsuji not mine.
It starts on the school playground with a skinned knee and the blond boy whose parents Claude's not once seen. He knows he hasn't because he's been there every day for almost a month, just watching.
Claude knows what he looks like, the 20-something sitting alone on the bench by the monkey bars, stoic and silent with dark, calculating eyes. Or, he knows what he should look like, except that he's been doing his sister countless favors, volunteering to pick up her eight-year-old son from school every day and walk him across the street to the park until she gets off from work.
It's Claude's excuse, and so instead of giving him a wide breadth and whispering horrified rumors behind his back, the mothers crowd around him and tell him how lucky his sister must be to have such a thoughtful brother.
He says nothing, but nods and thanks them easily, all the while staring past their pulled back hair and their worn-in sweatpants at the giddy kids trying to run up the slide, their young limbs intertwined in a chaotic mass of fighting and laughter and balance.
So it starts, with the blond boy and the skinned knee. The boy might be one of Claude's nephew's classmates or he might not be, but they look the same age and they stand precariously on the kiddie swings together, shouting in glee as they try to push each other off.
When they get bored of their game, Claude's nephew runs off to chase a laughing girl and the blond trips over his undone shoelaces, reaching out into thin air for something to break his fall. He catches nothing, and his skin tears easily as his knee skids across the pavement. It must hurt, but the boy does not cry out; instead he digs his nails into the wound, aggravating it, and then stands back up, his eyes scanning the playground as he wipes the blood on his shorts.
The boy catches Claude's eye and must notice that he is watching because he walks right up to him and points down at his knee.
"I'm bleeding," the boy tells him and he nods, looking at the pieces of asphalt clinging to the shredded skin and the blood slowly dribbling down his thin leg. Claude resists the urge to press his lips to the boy's skin, to run his tongue over his beat-up knees and the dirty, scratched-up palms of his hands.
"I've got a Band-Aid," Claude says instead, pulling it out of the bag that his sister insists he carry, and he doesn't even have to ask the boy to let him apply it; his knees are already draped over Claude's lap – as if he is actually a boy much younger – and he looks up expectantly.
It's a large wound and Claude uses two, three bandages, his hands slow and thorough and careful, and when he is finished the boy shows him his beat-up, filthy hands and Claude slathers them in Neosporin, caressing the soft palms with his thumbs.
When he's done, the boy sits beside him, idly swinging his legs back and forth on the bench before finally looking up at him.
"What's your name?" the boy asks.
"Claude," he answers. The boy nods in understanding, letting his piercing blue gaze drop down to his knees.
"I'm Alois," he replies after a bit, before once again falling silent at Claude's side.
Alois. Claude remembers that.
.
The next day, Alois greets him and drops his worn purple backpack next to Claude on the bench before running off to join a group of kids crowding around a boy with a Frisbee. He comes back half an hour later with dirt ground into his elbows and skid marks on his chin.
"I'm bleeding," he says again, and Claude isn't sure if the twitch in his lip is a smile or a grimace, but the boy sits down next to him regardless, and Claude fishes more bandages out of his bag.
Alois tilts his chin upward and lets Claude press the bandage to his skin as he peers up at him with inquisitive, unguarded eyes. In turn, Claude lets the back of his hand ghost over the tender expanse of the boy's neck and learns he smells of sugar: sticky, artificial red, and half-liquefied. Alois smiles, gathers up his backpack in his hands, and relaxes next to Claude on the bench.
"You only have boring Band-Aids," he says, glancing at Claude.
"What would you prefer?" he asks.
"Purple!" Alois replies brightly, an instantaneous answer.
"Yes, your highness," he answers, and Alois beams at him, either not noticing the sarcasm or ignoring it.
When Claude leaves with his nephew in tow, Alois waves him off, clutching his backpack to his chest and folding his legs underneath him as he settles down to watch the other children play.
.
Claude is surprised to learn that Alois is very chatty. He's not sure why that shocks him so much when all he knows of the boy comes from watching him run around the playground like any other fifth-grader, but he does not dwell on it and instead allows himself to become enraptured by the unusual lilt in the boy's voice, the delicate curves of his wrists, and the whiffs of bubble gum sweetness that roll off of him in fragile waves.
"Tie my shoelaces," Alois demands one day, pushing his feet into Claude's lap and interrupting himself in the middle of an explanation of why his mother stopped hiring babysitters when he was nine.
When Claude obeys with a slight bow and a wry 'yes, your highness', Alois grins and wriggles around beside him, his purple sneakers leaving dirty marks on Claude's Brioni slacks.
"Anyway," Alois continues once Claude is done, swinging his feet back to where they were, dangling off the edge of the bench, "she just gave up after that. Not like it bothered me or anything. None of the sitters stayed very long anyway."
"They said I was a bad kid," he adds after a beat, and Claude sees the way Alois's lip twitches as he bites into it with downcast eyes.
"But they were the ones who were bad," Alois rectifies, sticking out his tongue and crossing his eyes. "They never did what I wanted and they were no fun."
"Is that so," Claude answers with little intonation, and Alois huffs.
"Why are you here, then?" the boy asks. "You're no babysitter."
Claude considers the question, glancing up to pick out his nephew amongst the other children and the colorful metal structures that surge from the playground's surface like a complex series of bridges and castles, deceptively promising an eternity of color and fairytales and adventure. He finds the boy standing atop a climber and yelling down at the kids below, who are looking up at him jealously, as if his climbing prowess has elevated him to some god-like position, a new deity of the playground.
Claude doesn't care much for the imaginary designation, but figures it suits the strange, young child – the robust, demanding boy that stands as his excuse. Alois is right; he is no babysitter.
"Would you believe me if I said I came to see you?"
Alois's expression slacks in surprise and his eyes dart about Claude's face, searching for and finding nothing to signal a lie. Then, the boy grins through his bitten-up lips and sticks out his tongue.
"Alright, I'll believe you," Alois laughs, leaning comfortably into Claude's chest.
Claude allows himself a quick, crooked smile. After all, it is the truth.
.
On Halloween, Alois dresses like a pirate and informs Claude that his birthday is in a week. Claude adjusts the boy's hat and reties his eye patch and doesn't buy him a gift.
.
Even on days when he and his nephew stay late and the sun lies, glimmering, just above the horizon, Alois stays later. Claude looks over his shoulder and finds the boy sitting alone on the swings and kicking at the ground under his feet, eyes cast downward and shoulders hunched.
He gets the urge to kiss him, then; he wants to go back and press his mouth to those delicate pink lips and gather up Alois's wispy body in his arms and lie him flat against the worn rubber beneath them and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until he's breathless.
Claude wants to push the boy's worn, dusty cardigan off his shoulders and nip at his clavicle and run his fingers through Alois's hair and see if it's as soft as he imagines. He wants to remove the boy's shirt and dip his tongue into the hollows of his ribcage and taste the shivers that would shake his willowy frame at the cool lick of the November chill.
He wants, he wants, he wants, and the jeans that he's wearing today because he didn't have to go to work suddenly pull tighter around his hips as he walks away, turning his back to the lonely boy and aching in all the cruelest places.
.
Alois injures himself often, even through the thick, girly thigh-highs he dons to shield himself from winter's slow approach, and Claude has taken to carrying around more and more bandages. His nephew complains when the only Band-Aids he can find are purple, but he doesn't get hurt nearly as often, and those are Alois's favorite.
Claude asks, once, why purple, and Alois looks up at him, tongue poking between his teeth as he picks at a scab on his elbow.
"It's the color of royalty," he answers simply, and Claude nods, thinking he understands.
.
The playground empties out quicker once it starts to snow, and the parents who do stay huddle close around the benches, sharing warmth and gossip safely out of harm's way as snowballs go sailing through the air somewhere beyond their heads.
"I haven't seen Helena since the first day," one of them is saying, and the woman she is talking to shoves her hands into her pockets and purses her lips in knowing displeasure.
"Yes, well, what do you expect from her? Selfish. Not the mothering kind. Shallow and so reckless she doesn't even know who her son's father is."
Alois has draped himself moodily over Claude's lap and the tips of his fingers poke out from the stretched-out sleeves of his thick fleece sweatshirt, warm enough for autumn but much too thin for December and for snow. The boy's cheeks are pink and he shivers, tucking his nose into his collar and curling up into Claude's stomach. Alois can't stand the cold, Claude learns, and his hands are ice to the touch. When Claude asks why Alois still comes to the playground in the winter, the boy mumbles something into his hip and curls his hands into fists, retracting them back into the safety of his sleeves.
"I like it better here than at home."
When Claude shifts on the hard, wooden bench but doesn't answer, Alois turns to look up at him and smiles.
"I'm here to see you," he says, and this time Claude cannot resist the urge to run his fingers through the boy's tousled hair. It's just as soft as he imagined, nothing like the brittle, damaged, forced locks of the girls at the university, and Alois leans into the touch.
One of the mothers glances back at them, arms folded tightly across her chest, and frowns. Claude does not remove his hand.
.
A week before Christmas break, Claude picks up a hat and a pair of purple mittens from a vendor near the hospital where he works and gives them to Alois as a gift. The boy's eyes light up in confused fascination and he pulls the hat down over his ears with a smile. Something magnetic and strong twists and pulls in Claude's abdomen and, for the barest second, he wishes it were guilt.
.
The first time Claude sees Alois in the new year, he's lost one of the mittens but acquired a warmer coat – thick with down and with an oversized hood that flaps carelessly behind him. It wraps around him soft and proper and the hat Claude gifted him with several weeks prior covers the tips of his red ears, but when he comes to the bench and scoops up a handful of snow to lob at his classmates, his fingers are blistered and red and Claude recognizes the symptoms almost immediately.
The next time Alois approaches the bench, he is tired and done with snowballs and running around and Claude takes him by his bare hand, wraps up the boy's cold fingers in his large, warm palms, and tells him about frostnip.
"Frostnip?" Alois parrots, looking down at their intertwined hands in awe.
"Yes," Claude answers, squeezing the boy's hand lightly and feeling the damaged skin press stubbornly against his palms. Alois winces and Claude asks what happened to the other mitten. The boy shrugs, looking down at his covered hand and wriggling his fingers in its confines.
"Lost it in the snow," Alois tells him guiltlessly, eying Claude with a playful smile, and Claude isn't sure what to do or how to respond in a way that isn't lowering his head to capture the boy's sweet lips, so he just takes off the boy's other mitten – he's got frost nip on both hands, Claude notices – and presses the cold fingers together between his palms, only letting go when Alois starts to wriggle in discomfort, saying his fingers feel like they're burning.
When Claude lets go, Alois smiles and runs off, stopping by the slide to shove his hands in some older boy's face and brag about the damages his hands have suffered, the red welts like battle scars to their young eyes.
.
Valentine's day comes and goes.
.
Claude begins rounding back to the playground long after he drops his nephew off at his sister's and Alois – little more than a solitary wisp of a boy in the empty park – receives him gratefully, hopping off the swings and waiting for him by the park gate with his slender arms dangling prettily off the edge of the fence and his wind-burned lips parted in a smile.
"Ever kissed a girl?" Claude asks one day as he kneels on the rain-dampened tarmac in front of Alois, who's looking down at him from where he sits on the swing, his thin legs kicking at the air absently. Alois wrinkles his nose in disgust.
"Girls are horrible," he answers vehemently, and Claude wonders, briefly, what the boy's mother is like. If he has a sister. A father. How the babysitters treated him before he started acting out. After a beat, he asks again.
"Boys, then?" Alois flushes in guilty surprise and his bare foot grazes Claude's thigh self-consciously. Claude laughs and reaches out to grab the foot hovering over his legs. Alois, ticklish, squeals and wriggles in surprise. When the boy quiets down and stops moving, Claude bends and presses his lips to the bridge of Alois's foot and the skin is soft and cool and Alois gasps, the muted inhale like music to the blood in Claude's veins.
When Claude looks back up at Alois's face, the boy is gaping at him.
"W-why'd you do that?" he asks, and Claude's smile is so wide he's sure he'd never be able to recognize himself in a mirror.
"You've got cute feet," Claude answers, grabbing Alois's other foot and kissing that one too. When the boy finally finishes giggling, a comfortable silence descends over them and Claude lets go of Alois's feet and grasps, instead, the swing's chains.
"It's okay, you know, to like boys," Claude tells him, pushing Alois's wind-tousled hair away from his eyes. Alois does not respond, but his eyes are wide and searching and Claude continues.
"I like you," Claude says, and Alois lurches forward a bit on the swing.
"Me?" he asks, voice jumping an octave.
"Enough to want to kiss you. Can I?" Claude sees Alois hesitate and does not move – does not breathe – as he watches the boy work his bottom lip between his teeth and unconsciously flutter his eyelashes as his eyes dart back and forth beneath them. Thirty seconds, two minutes, five hours, the wait is all the same to Claude and he grips the chains of the swing, waiting. Finally, Alois looks back up at him.
"Okay," he says, and Claude grabs him by the hand, pulling the boy around to the far side of the small structure that houses the playground's dirty restrooms and sprinkler controls, where the giant oaks paint long, dark shadows across the ruddy brick wall. Then, he surges forward, tangling his hands in the boy's hair and kissing him long and deep and hungry and he doesn't pull away until Alois is panting and his cheeks are red with embarrassment and exertion.
"Oh," is all Alois manages afterward, his fingers still pressed to his lips in bewilderment as Claude leaves.
.
Alois invites Claude to his house one April afternoon and Claude is almost too taken aback to respond. He does respond, though, and on the way there Alois grips the cuff of his sleeve in one soft hand, happily leading him down the winding suburban streets to his home.
Compared to the houses it sits between – two large, brick monstrosities with spiral staircases and complex front gardens – the house Alois brings him to is a pitiful-looking split-ranch style building with scraggly, yellow grass and untamed ivy creeping up the walls.
The inside is no more impressive; the fridge is virtually empty and when Alois goes to retrieve food from the cupboard in the hallway, Claude catches a glimpse of nothing but diet pills and protein bars piled high atop one another. Alois emerges with a handful of WonderSlim meal replacement bars and Claude realizes, finally, why the boy is so tiny.
"Do you want one?" Alois asks, mouth full as he holds out a bar in Claude's direction. Claude declines the offer and Alois shrugs, opening the last bar and stuffing it in his mouth.
"Do you want to see my bedroom?" Alois asks, and Claude cannot get the 'yes' out fast enough.
The boy's room is messy – clothes cover his bed and papers litter his desk and there's a blanket draped over his chair – but even beneath the mess, Claude is struck by the starkness of the room. The walls are white – perhaps some shade of 'soft eggshell' – and only the splashes of color Alois's clothes provide keep the room from feeling like an institution.
Alois flumps down on his bed, face buried in the pillow, and Claude pauses in his appraisal of the colorful collection of paper clips piled atop the boy's desk to stare, to take in the beautiful, shallow arch of his back and the way his feet kick at the air above him, ever-restless. Alois has gone back to wearing shorts now that the weather is warming up again. He ditched the thigh-highs for jeans in December when one of the older boys kicked him to the asphalt and called him a pussy, much to Claude's disappointment.
Alois wears his shorts shorter than all of the boys and most of the girls; he has lovely legs.
Claude sits down next to Alois on the purple sheets and prods him gently in the side. The boy laughs and rolls over, staring up at Claude with his blonde hair pressed to the pillow beneath him like a halo, and Claude kisses him.
Alois's lips are pliant beneath his own and so Claude devours him, acutely aware of the wetness of the boy's mouth and the tender ribs pressing insistently against his firm hands. If Claude knew how to devour Alois's breath from his heaving lungs, he would. Instead, he settles for plunging his tongue into the boy's mouth and running his hands along the subtle curve of his hips and when Claude pulls away, Alois is foggy-eyed and his hands are fisted tightly in Claude's blue shirt. Alois's lips curve into a lazy smile and he leans into Claude's hand, his fingers carding though Alois's hair.
"I have homework," Alois finally tells him, and for an hour or two, Claude helps the boy with his fractions and his verbs, peppering kisses along the back of his neck every time he squirms in Claude's lap. When they're done, Claude tucks Alois into bed and locks himself in the bathroom until he knows he can walk straight again.
.
The first time Claude meets Alois's mother, he is leaving her house after putting Alois to sleep and somewhere behind his naturally impassive expression, he panics.
"Who are you?" she asks, slamming her car door shut and turning to study him, eyes sweeping up from the tips of his dress shoes to his glasses with an expression so familiar he almost doesn't recognize it. She's petite and has her son's face – Alois's soft hair and his blue eyes – and instead of pinning him to the door behind him with a look of suspicion like she ought to, she is checking him out the way the girls in the bars near the university do.
"Alois hurt his ankle at the park today," Claude lies, introducing himself as Katarina's brother, Adam's uncle. "I thought it best I stay with him until he got home to make sure it wasn't sprained."
"You're a doctor?" she asks, eyes widening a fraction in surprise.
"A medical school student," he corrects, and her arched brows slowly come down the expanse of her forehead.
"Are you now?" she asks, fiddling with the strap of her bag and looking up at Claude with a smile. "That's so impressive. And you took such good care of my son; you must let me treat you to dinner sometime so I can thank you."
When Claude opens his mouth to decline the offer, she lays a hand on his arm and insists, pulling a blue pen from her purse and scribbling her number onto his palm.
"You call me," she says unlocking her front door, words like an admonishment as she lets herself in and then waves Claude off before shutting the door behind her.
Claude goes home and lets the ink bleed incomprehensible in the shower as he strokes himself off to the thought of Alois and his big blue eyes and the way he chokes on Claude's tongue when he shoves it down the boy's throat.
.
Some days they don't even make it to the bedroom and Claude has to take Alois's DS from his hands so he can press the boy to the couch in the parlor, feeling his strong heartbeat beneath his tongue as he explores Alois's chest. A body strung up to a machine couldn't keep such a steady beat and Claude knows he's the only one who'd ever properly appreciate that, the only one who could properly worship the pure liquid vitality flowing through Alois's veins like lava. The thought spurs him on, and Alois's breath hitches when Claude's tongue reaches his waistband and his thumb pops the button of his shorts.
"Don't! That's dirty!" Alois protests, but Claude shushes him with a gentle, reassuring hand on the inside of his thigh and goes down, the boy's short nails digging desperately into his shoulders and his slight frame trembling 'til he's spent.
He lets the boy ride out the afterglow as he seeks solace pressed up against the bathroom's cold tiles with his hand down his pants, imagining the light blue color scheme as one that closer approximates the color of Alois's eyes.
Afterward, Alois lies comfortably against Claude's chest and sighs, DS long forgotten on the table in front of them. Claude runs his hands over the boy's back in soothing circles and exhales, reluctant to break the silence.
"What?" Alois says, catching the faint sound of Claude's altered breathing and lifting his head to stare down at him, hair mussed and brows creased in interest.
"Can you keep a secret?" Claude asks, and Alois's eyes light up.
"Of course I can," he answers. "I'm really good at it, too."
"That's good," Claude says with a smile, his hands stopping to cradle the boy's ass and caress the jutting hipbones pressed against his stomach. "Can you keep this a secret then?"
"What just happened?" the boy inquires, and Claude shakes his head.
"No, all of it. Everything." Alois nods, but the corners of his lips are pulled down in confusion.
"Okay. Why?"
"Because I'm asking you to," Claude answers, ruffling Alois's hair. Alois frowns and opens his mouth to protest, but Claude presses a finger to his lips, then a kiss, and the boy drops it.
"Okay," Alois laughs, letting his head flop back onto Claude's chest. "I can do that. That can be our secret."
Claude kisses him again and carries him off to bed.
.
The next time Claude runs into Alois's mother, he is walking Alois home and he doesn't have an excuse. She arches a thin eyebrow in what Claude thinks is suspicion, but she doesn't mention it, instead introducing herself as Helena – "How rude of me to have not introduced myself last time, and what did you say your name was?" – and laying a delicately-shaped hand on his forearm, her grip like a vice as she steers him toward the house, insistent on him joining them for dinner.
With Alois clinging to his other hand and no explanations to offer, he finds it hard to say no and offers her a charming fake smile and feigns interest as he places his free hand on her shoulder and lets himself be pulled into the house he's already so familiar with.
Helena shows him the kitchen and the cold, impersonal dining room and Claude couldn't care less because he already knows the ins and outs of Alois's bedroom and the sensation of the bathroom door against his back when he sinks down against it half out of his mind after he's put Alois to sleep.
The dinner Helena serves him is a simple pasta dish but it's overdone and the sauce is lukewarm at best. Still, Alois wolfs it down as he sits next to Claude at the table, and his mouth is so full of food that for once, he cannot chatter.
Helena leaps on Alois's silence, monopolizing the flow of conversation as she questions Claude about his dating history, his university, and the gym he frequents. Claude answers because the more she talks, the more she reminds him of Alois, blond hair curling around her cheeks and blue eyes flashing in genuine, hungry interest. Claude pins her age at around forty but her face looks young and medicated and wrinkle-free and she and Alois look so much alike that he doesn't even stop her when her bare foot sidles up his leg under the table.
.
So close to summer, the air takes a turn for the hot and sticky and Claude shifts uncomfortably on the bench as his pants begin clinging to his legs. His sister reminds him, some days, that though she is grateful for his help, he needn't feel obligated to pick up her son day after day. He entertains the notion briefly, considering rounding back after everyone has left the park to walk Alois home, but then the sprinklers turn on and Alois sheds his shirt and his shoes and exchanges his shorts for a swimsuit and Claude cannot understand why he ever thought of leaving, not when the sun and the water dance upon Alois's skin in ways that make his entire being tremble. There is a bottomless, intricate yearning that fills the hollow of Claude's chest and he finds that he envies the sun and the droplets of water that glide down Alois's slender back.
Alois turns toward him, as if sensing the itch of Claude's desire on the sensitive nape of his neck – diluted twenty times over by their distance, or it would have lit an explosive fire across his skin – and comes to Claude wet and dripping with a red flush across his fair cheeks and his white shoulders.
"I have no sunscreen," Alois tells him, "and I burn easy."
Claude knows an invitation when he sees one and he reaches out to soothe the irritated skin, the pads of his fingers stinging to trace beautiful, invisible patterns over the expanse of Alois's back.
.
Helena shows up at the park one Friday in June and takes the seat next to Claude on the bench by the monkey bars. The other parents exchange surprised glances from across the playground and discreet whispers float through the air around them, soft but insistently present. Helena ignores them with a practiced ease and turns to Claude, the smile curving her pink lips surprisingly serene.
"Hello," she says simply, fingers feather-light on the back of Claude's wrist in some strange, sensual greeting.
"Hello," he echoes, turning to watch Alois dump a bucket of water down Adam's shirt. Helena's gaze follows his and she laughs.
"The two of them really get along, don't they?" she asks, and Claude considers telling her that she's wrong, that her son and his nephew probably don't even know each other's names and only interact on the playground every once in a while, but her hand has moved to his shoulder and her blue eyes spark with something he can't place, but that reminds him of Alois and the way his wet eyes glisten like oceans in the right light.
An hour later, the two boys are at Katarina's house and Claude is pinning Helena to the bedroom door of his cramped apartment on the other side of the park. Her lips are firm against his and her fingernails drive aggressively into his lower back and Claude is sure he'll find the red crescent-moons engraved upon his skin when they're through.
She pulls and tugs at his shirt and he lets her remove it then does the same, leaning in close as he toys with the buttons of her blouse. He gets a strong whiff of flora and amber, nothing like Alois's sticky-sweetness but intoxicating in its own right.
Helena drags him over to the bed and pulls him down on top of her with a childish giggle that shoots straight to Claude's veins, and he wishes she'd talk, say something, say anything, ramble on and on about her day or her favorite color or how much she loves hiding behind the bushes in the butterfly garden.
Claude wants Alois on that bed; he wants the boy in his room, on top of his desk, tangled in his sheets, but he can settle for second best and Helena's obsession with self-preservation makes her body lean and flexible and she bites her lip in the same way Alois does when Claude runs his hands up her legs.
Through the haze of his afterglow, Helena talks to him, latching onto his arm like a harpy, and Claude feels nauseous, her whispers cutting through his addled mind like razorblades.
"Alois was a mistake," she whispers harshly. "He was an accident and I don't even know who his father is. I'm not a mother. You know that, don't you? That's why you're with me; you know I'm not cut out for playgrounds and carpools. I'm better here, like this."
Claude hates her, and then hates himself. He feels ill and his bed feels soiled and he doesn't know how to ask her to leave – she stays awake just long enough to call Claude's sister and arrange a sleepover – so she stays the night and he doesn't sleep, too concerned with the way he cannot separate Alois from the vile, writhing woman sleeping in his bed.
Claude suffers through breakfast with her and then bolts the door when she leaves.
.
Claude doesn't show up at the playground on Monday, or on Tuesday. He doesn't show up for the rest of the month, and Alois and takes up residence on Claude's bench.