He's doing it again, comes Claudia's hiss. Hurting you, again.
Louis is quiet. Silent. He lifts the cigarette, end flaring bright as he takes a long drag of it. Of course he remembers the apology. Of course. Every word of it has wedged into his chest, made a home beneath his skin. How what little is left of his heart has softened. Those words live there, in what fragments and shards Louis has left. If he lets himself, he can feel the way they breathe together. The way the world closes in around them, and how right and good it is to feel that.
What does he do with this? With this feeling in the wreckage and absence of Claudia?
"Him," is where he settles. His anger, it is not unlike a dog flicking an eye open, scenting the air. Sensing something to be worked free, something that has passed by Louis without being perceived.
Safer, to step back. Observe it all from the safe vantage of his anger.
"Him?" repeated, a question. Santiago, whose head Louis had kicked down the alley. Sam, who vanished. And—
no subject
Louis is quiet. Silent. He lifts the cigarette, end flaring bright as he takes a long drag of it. Of course he remembers the apology. Of course. Every word of it has wedged into his chest, made a home beneath his skin. How what little is left of his heart has softened. Those words live there, in what fragments and shards Louis has left. If he lets himself, he can feel the way they breathe together. The way the world closes in around them, and how right and good it is to feel that.
What does he do with this? With this feeling in the wreckage and absence of Claudia?
"Him," is where he settles. His anger, it is not unlike a dog flicking an eye open, scenting the air. Sensing something to be worked free, something that has passed by Louis without being perceived.
Safer, to step back. Observe it all from the safe vantage of his anger.
"Him?" repeated, a question. Santiago, whose head Louis had kicked down the alley. Sam, who vanished. And—
Armand. Armand, who Louis warned away.