with your eyes so bright
Louis spends approximately the next week and a half almost wilting with embarrassment over the whole incident - I want people to think I'm pretty! Especially other people that are also pretty!
He can just about hear Lily in his head muttering Talk to other human beings lately, Lou?
Which is terrible because even the voice in his head that's his voice agrees with the Lily-voice, and also because Lily always kicks people when they are down and having her poking holes in his self esteem even from inside his head is just unfair. Of course, there's also the matter of the entire staring thing that happened before that, and now Louis is seriously wondering about looking into that hana-kimi suicide thing again.
For whatever reason, this internal landscape of despair and self loathing doesn't actually stop his visits to Noemie – okay, that's a half a lie, he's completely aware of why him being an embarrassment to the world doesn't affect his visits to Noemie, and it's only partly because vanishing in order to mentally chastise himself would make him terrible company.
Mostly, it's because Noemie is, well, nice. To spend time with.
It helps that Noemie is smart. Not just smart like Louis is – books and aesthetics and pictures – but in a sharp way, in a clear way. He talks to her about the photos for the paper, the sometimes pleasant, sometimes uncomfortable tenor of the interviews, and she plucks out details he barely notices and drags them into stories, finding insights in the people that Louis talks about that he barely sees the shape of.
"What kind of articles did you write, exactly?" Louis asks at last, feeling surprised and enlightened.
She lifts her shoulders, a funny thing that's more a tilt than a shrug. "Politics," she says, "All bastards."
"O-oh?" Louis says.
Noemie gives him a bit of a look. "I am very good at my job," she tells him.
"Oh, I know," he says, then shakes his head, "I mean – I can tell. That you would be," he says, instead, "I just… you seem… I dunno, I didn't expect you to like that?" It's half a question again, even though he doesn't really expect an answer.
But she does give him an answer. "My father was, ten years ago, he was the…" she shrugs again, that same fluid movement, "Minister, I suppose?"
"What, of France?" Louis asks, a little breathlessly, "Merlin."
Her smile is a little self-conscious, but she nods all the same.
"So, it is easy to write about," she says, "Easy to talk to people I have known a long time."
She still doesn't say she likes it, though.
He's too shy to say it to her face, but it doesn't look like it's something that makes her happy, not like puzzling out Jack the intern's strange silences or the subject of their last interest piece's obsession with parrots.
But when they discuss Noemie's job in more detail, Louis can't help being interested in it – he's half in the Wizarding world and half in the Muggle one, so he can barely keep different officials straight, much less detail their entire political histories the way Noemie does – but she makes it easy to listen to sordid stories of power, and corruption, and the tradeoffs which are part of her own work – which keep some of the darkness away from public sight for other things worth exposing. Louis admires how steadfast she is in weighing the balance between what is unpleasant and what is necessary to tell, and likes her better for the wrinkle between her eyes which says that she is angry with the choice all the same.
And – Louis feels a little ashamed for thinking it – the fact that Noemie is a witch makes that much easier to talk to her. It's not like he doesn't spend time with other people who aren't witches – see Anna for exhibit A – but there's just little things that he can't explain properly or talk about when he's with someone without magic. Having someone who is not only listening to him, but who knows what he means, even when it's something silly like his difficulties with using pounds instead of normal money – though it's obviously not the pound in France, it's the other thing – is important in a way Louis hadn't realized.
Louis likes to think that she doesn't find him boring either, considering that she does sometimes turn that same sparkling interest on him.
"It's nothing like what you do," he tells her, not wanting to be dull in front of her, and she makes an eloquent noise at him.
Louis wonders if he should be offended – he still finds it hard to tell if Noemie's making fun of him or not. "It's not – I mean, I know it isn't all of that complicated stuff with Ministers and all," he says carefully, and she shakes her head at him, rolling her eyes.
"You take Muggle pictures," she says, "Of course it is nothing like what I do; that is why it is interesting."
He smiles a bit at that, and she smiles back.
"Aren't they –" she begins, then seems to reconsider, "Aren't they strange?"
"It depends," Louis says, "Strange how? Because the photos don't move?" She nods, and he picks up the movement, thinking.
"No," he says, after a second, "It isn't like that. It's, you know, it's not –" he labors over it for a second, "It's what I see. I can show people what I see, what a person looks like when I am looking at them."
"And that is important," she says, "Because people don't often notice what you see?"
"No, no, I don't mean like – like I have this great perspective or anything, I'm just. Well, I'm used to being overlooked, I suppose? We've got – there's twelve of us cousins, you know? And we – well, we all grew up mostly together, we're practically brothers and sisters. And I'm the youngest, so…" He shrugs and lets the sentence trail off.
"Your family is very – secure, no?" Noemie says into the silence, "Heroes of the war, officials in the government." He squirms a little at that, and Noemie notices, makes that a part of her question, too, when she says. "You could take your photos anywhere. Why leave your home and come here, to work for a Muggle paper?"
"Well, I mean," Louis catches himself twining his fingers around themselves, and stops it with some force of will. "I'm the youngest, so I. I – um, so I had to get away from home to be – be a person."
He flicks a glance at her, "That sounds silly, doesn't it?" he says, and rambles on before she can respond, "I just mean…when I'm at home… I'm a bit spoiled, and a bit stupid – I mean, I'm a bit stupid everywhere - I do so many stupid things, but I –"
"Why do you do that?" Noemie's wearing her piercing journalist look, and that means Louis feels vaguely guilty even though he is not a corrupt business owner and hasn't made any policies in his life, ever.
"Do… what?" Louis ventures.
"Stupid and spoiled?" she says, "Why do you need to do that?"
"I –" says Louis, because he is shocked.
She drops her chin into her hands, looking at him like he is something she is trying to write an editorial on – something she is trying to crack open before she puts it back together.
"You have been coming here for weeks," she says, "Back and forth, from your home and your work, because I am – I am lonely," she manages this last with a little difficulty, and Louis has to fight a wince for her, for her pride, but Noemie doesn't falter.
"Why," she asks him, "do you always apologize?"
Louis takes a second. He takes a deep breath.
"They're all –" he says at last, "My family – they're all, just, good, you know?" he finishes, in a hushed voice, "Just, everything they do, they do it well, and they all – it's all important, the work they do, and they all are helping people and I – " he shrugs, "I – I feel … small around them, that's all."
"Yes," Noemie murmurs, staring at her knees, and then says something else he doesn't expect: "They must be good. If you think so much of them."
Louis doesn't know what to say. He drops his eyes back to his hands, which are restlessly knotting themselves together, and then back up at the wall, and to his feet.
"I just don't want –" Louis begins, while Noemie starts saying, "I am sorry if –"
They stop at the same time, and then Louis says, "Am I red?"
"Like an apple," Noemie tells him wryly.
"Pomme," Louis says, a little desperately, "That's the French word, isn't it? I kept thinking it was bum, and Mattie, my cousin Mathilde, she laughed for weeks when I said it out loud."
It's a funny story, but Louis is not telling it like a funny story.
"I don't want to disappoint you, I guess," he says, finally meeting her eyes, "If I do something idiotic."
"It would take worse than that," Noemie says, and this time she is the one to break their gaze.