with your eyes so bright
Six days later, when Louis' desperate attempts to avoid entering Anna's house again are finally beaten into submission by his empty wallet and waning willingness to buy ridiculously over-expensive coffee (and okay, minor amounts of concern about the lady apparently living there by herself – very minor, totally not important), he spends the last of his funds on a giant bar of chocolate in order to give himself enough borrowed courage (and/or a big enough sugar high) to attempt Anna's flat again.
And then he digs up an unexpected treasure trove of change in his back pocket, so he happily buys another one before he has to worm his way past the doorman and up the stairs to Anna's flat.
"Hello?" he murmurs nervously, sticking his head around the door after he knocks, "Er, Noemie?" To his surprise and mild terror, she seems to be, once again, crouched on the couch in the living room.
"Oh… Louis, is it?" She says, cocking her head curiously. "Did you… want something?"
"I, um," he begins. I came to get coffee from Anna's machine suddenly sounds very weak in his head, so he shoots one mournful look at his remaining candy bar before offering it to her placatingly, "I brought you chocolate?" he ventures, and nearly jumps when she lets out a joyful groan before she waddles (oh Merlin, he's stuck in a room with a waddling woman) over to take it from him.
"Mon dieu, merci!" she says loudly, biting into it with a fervor that he wouldn't have expected in a woman so elegant-looking. The look she turns on him is a bit embarrassed, though. "I mean, thank you… very much." She says, with an uncomfortable smile.
"No, no, it's fine," he says, flapping a hand, "Mum's French, so it's okay."
"Oh." She says, eyes widening in surprise, "Vraiment? Est-ce que vous parlez, aussi, ou…?"
Louis shrugs, nervously, "Well, a little. Mattie – that's my cousin, Mathilde – she says my accent's terrible, though, so unless you want to hear a really, really mangled version of it, I'm not really the right person …" he trails off, meeting her eyes sheepishly.
She looks a bit crestfallen at his admission, but nods anyway, and edges aside to let him in. "Would you like to sit?" she murmurs, and Louis does, all the while trying to imagine one of his cousins (or his sisters) stuck in some foreign country with no one around who can speak English or help them at all, and winces. It sounds like total, complete shit, and he wonders what exactly she could possibly be doing here, so clearly in need of someone to talk to her in her own language.
"Um," he begins, and then stops, unsure how to ask, and even more unwilling to risk another piercing look from Noemie.
"Yes?" she says, and he shakes his head. "No, nothing," he mutters, sweeping an eye around the apartment. It's almost impossible to tell that someone (other than Anna, at least) is even living in the flat – there are the same clusters of photos from their Belize trip, and Anna's increasingly ridiculous collection of foreign knickknacks hanging on the walls, and aside from the guest room's door hanging gently open, there is nothing so much as hinting at another occupant.
There's something so pathetic about that, being six months pregnant, with no cousins, no family, no boyfriend or whoever, stuck in someone else's apartment indefinitely, that Louis clears his throat at last, and tries again. "So – you didn't, erm – I mean, is anyone else coming to visit you?" he blurts out, "Friends or…?"
She frowns and crunches into the chocolate. "No," she says. "No one is coming."
"Really?" he says faintly, "Oh. Okay. Um, so, how did you end up here? In Anna's house?"
"I…" she begins, still staring at the chocolate in her hands. "I am… I am pregnant by someone who is not eager on having me around. Or this." She says at last, gesturing to her stomach with a wry smile, and, oh, Louis feels like an absolute arse, now.
The quiet must go on too long, because she turns and catches Louis' stunned look full on.
"I'm…" he begins, "I'm sorry, I didn't -" he shakes his head mutely, and for whatever reason, this makes her smile.
"He's not – just someone," she adds, "He is my fiancé. And he finds it – indiscreet."
"Indiscreet," Louis repeats helplessly, trying not to hate Noemie's fiancé just for the brittle quality that word brings into her expression.
"Oh, yes," Noemie continues, idly chewing on the chocolate bar, "As if I am something to be ashamed of, or hidden."
"That's rubbish," Louis says, hunkering down into what Victoire calls his 'story time' pose – legs crossed, leaning on his hands – "And you're still marrying him?"
Noemie shrugs, "I do not know – I don't think so," she finishes on a scornful laugh, "I think both of us…thought we were marrying a different kind of person than we are. And we both said very upsetting things."
"So you came to stay with Anna, but she just left for Brazil – how do you know her, by the way?" he asks, trying to puzzle out the connection, "I can't remember her mentioning you."
"We met at the – there was a convention in Nice? For journalists, and –"
"Oh, I remember that one – I was in… Russia with my cousin Lily, so I couldn't – oh, sorry, you were talking," Louis gestures back at her, and just catches the edge of her expression, something a little coloured with envy. Louis can't parse it yet, so he pretends nothing was there. Noemie looks away and shrugs awkwardly.
"No, that is – mostly it, we attended the same conferences, and I told her about the – my situation, and she offered me the place to stay."
Louis wants to say And that was the best offer you got? But he has no desire to embarrass her, to make her seem any more lonely to his imagination.
"Did she know that – I mean," he tries to think through the right words for a second, "So you came to be alone on purpose?"
This time Noemie is the one that pauses. "No," she says, after a moment, "No."
Louis tries not to squirm, because he's not ten anymore, and it's stupid, but, Merlin.
She sounds bleak, and lonely, and – and abandoned.
He's only doing photos for human interest pieces while Anna's out, he could maybe stand to stop by every so often, and see if she's okay? If he needs to, he can get away with going in late every, and, frankly, it wouldn't matter if he couldn't, because he's going to be here even if Marie runs after him brandishing a letter opener like she did when Ben brought those greyhounds inside, because no one should ever be this completely alone.