with your eyes so bright
"Looooou, my daaaarling, how aaaaare you?"
Anna's breathy wailing over the line sends Louis into a fit of giggles that makes Maria stare at him, slit-eyed.
"Oh, Anna, my deeeeear, I'm waaaahn-derful," Louis says, after he gets his breath back, "How are youuuu?"
"Oh, my beautiful angelfish, I'm really – really cutting the rug here, really rocking the boat. You?"
"Oh, gracious, my very fine feline, I am just knocking over the lamps at home, I am setting the family farm on fire," Louis returns. He's long given up on figuring out which of Anna's phrases are actual Muggle expressions and just resorted to offering up his own.
Anna rewards him with an honest snort-guffaw – a rare prize. "I'm stealing that, I'm going to say I'm knocking over the lamps at home to everyone," she tells him, almost at her normal register.
"You should, it can mean practically anything," Louis responds. "How are you?"
"Just about done," she says, a little blunt, which means she's done emotionally, and ready to leave. "I love you, are you bored without me?"
He hesitates a second and says, "Well…"
"Well?"
"I met the lady in your apartment – Noemie?" The second after he says it, he regrets it. Lady? It sounds like he's discussing a fifty-year-old with an ugly hat.
"Oh – is she – I forgot to tell you, I'm sorry, are you okay?" Anna's voice is genuinely remorseful. "Did she throw you out or – I can yell at her, she's not allowed to throw you out."
"She didn't," Louis exclaims, "It's not – "
He labors over it too long, because Anna says, "Noooo. Louis, no."
"What?" he says, then: "I didn't! I did not, at all!"
There's a pause and then Anna says, "Louis, do I have to come home right-now-immediately, please tell me, because I will come home right-now-immediately, and I will help you fix this, I promise."
"You do not have to do anything you don't want to," Louis replies, slightly peeved, "Unless you're really done-done, because then come home right now, and I'll buy you at least…" he peeks at his wallet, "…one coffee."
"Pathetic," Anna says. "When's payday?"
"A week," he mutters.
"Sad. Poor child. I'll be home in a week-ish, then, tell her I said hi, and don't be embarrassing."
"Too late," Louis says, making sure he hears her hang up the phone first. He should have asked Anna if she's planning to live with Noemie, if Noemie has other options if she doesn't want a roommate, if Anna – who's brash and lovable and interfering and generous – talked to Noemie for more than a minute before giving up her room, if Noemie will be prickly and sharp and ice-cold around Anna or perceptive and curious and –
"Oh, for Merlin's sake, Weasley," Louis mutters.
-x-
Louis is a bit nervy after that about going back to Anna's flat.
There'a still a left-over spark in him that glows every time he remembers Noemie saying Why do you need to do that? and on top of that, there's Anna's voice echoing in his head, intoning Noooo, Louis, no, when he isn't entirely prepared for it.
He doesn't want to be weird, but he wonders if he could look for some of Noemie's old articles, to find out how much of that brilliant, piercing insight she spends freely on people she doesn't like, if it's a part of how she sees everyone, or if it's, maybe, something she saves for people that – well, never mind. It's definitely weird.
He labors over it a little bit, how to show Noemie what it had meant to him, and finally settles on something that's – well, that's good enough. He shows up on Friday with cupcakes from his favorite bakery; it's a little out of the way, but the pastries are decorated with trains and cars made out of icing and delicate sugar aeroplanes, little architectural delights that are twice as fun to look at as to eat.
Noemie opens the door with a mixture of surprise and guarded pleasure on her face.
"Are you here from work?" she asks, after a second, gesturing at his satchel.
"Mm-hm," he says, "And I brought food?"
She smiles at him, and holds out her hand. "You are learning very quickly," she says, stepping back to let him inside, and then makes a face when she opens the box. "Are you sure I will have a boy?" she asks, and elaborates at his confused expression. "Planes and cars? No… princess? No butterflies?"
"Oh," Louis says, realizing what this maybe looks like to her, and trying to figure out how to be not-weird, extremely not-weird, "Oh – No, they're my favorites. They make all the little planes by hand and that's why they're all a bit different, erm. Yeah."
Noemie's eyebrows tilt up a fraction, and she picks up a cake thoughtfully. "All by hand?" she says, with an amused little glance at him.
Louis nods and flaps his hand in a gesture that might mean Automobiles are cool! In some dialect of Antarctic sign language.
"I don't know why you are still standing," Noemie adds, striding past him towards the kitchen. Well. Sort of striding.
He follows her a bit tentatively, tucking his work bag next to the battered nightstand Anna has by the door first. "Should I help with anything?" he asks.
Noemie gives him a bewildered look. "I'm getting juice," she says, "For myself. I am not playing hostess for you."
"Oh, yeah. Of course," Louis says, deflating.
"You are still standing there," Noemie says after a few seconds, amused.
Louis' hands are interlaced and he's tapping his thumbs together. "I had an idea," he says.
Her eyebrows rise incrementally, curious and skeptical, inviting him to continue.
She has very expressive eyebrows, Louis decides.
"Well, last time you said that you were interested in what I did, and so I thought – if you wanted – I could show you? I brought my camera and…" he shrugs at his work bag, and then peers at her.
There's something that … unravels?, in Noemie's shoulders as she turns to him. "What are you planning to photograph?" she asks, cradling the mug of juice between her hands.
"Er, who, actually," Louis corrects, then: "That is, you?"
"…Oh." says Noemie. Louis tries to decipher her eyebrows.
"You can say no," he says, almost sure she's about to. What a massively stupid idea, anyway. Hello, nice person that's a feeling little sensitive right now, would you like to have a stranger take photos of you? Of course not.
"Where would you take it?" Noemie asks, leaning one shoulder against the doorway.
Louis' fingers stop tapping. He has thought about this, he realizes. It's because he knows Anna's apartment like the back of his hand, because it's half full of things he's bought, but the picture takes shape in the moment he considers it.
In profile, framed by the window, he thinks. In shades of blue, with her wearing that determined expression he's seen on her a few times; the strongest thing in the room.
"On the couch?" he says, because… that's what he says. She smiles at that, more a deepening at the corners of her mouth than a real movement.
"I see that you are careful of your clients' comfort," she says, slowly shifting past him towards the living room. Louis stutters past that moment, and reaches for his bag instead.
If she's sitting on the couch instead of by the windows, then it's got to be full of colours, the brown of the couch and the green of the throw and that side table covered with the bottles he refuses to stop bringing back and storing in Anna's apartment. Luckily they're all bright, too, so it should work. The only irritating part is that he's not sure how he wants her to look – there's a frustrating blank in the part of the photograph where she should sit.
He loses himself in the process of clipping together his lens and adjusting the focus, trying to puzzle it out before he faces Noemie again. Instead, he turns into the casual assessment of her gaze, facing him over the side of the couch. She's resting her chin on one hand, impeded from fully turning by her stomach, and Louis is… not getting up.
He wants to impress her, which is awful enough - to earn that If you think so much of them she'd given him as if it didn't cost anything. But he – he isn't just doing this for Noemie; this isn't just work, where it's obvious what he's trying to showcase, or like the photos he was taking for fun before that, where it was just what caught his eye. This is for him, too, Louis realizes, halfway to standing, speared by the thought.
Oh, fuck, he thinks, and gets up.