F I C : paris mon amour .

[solosection]

3.

While in Paris, he doesn't actually stay at any hotel, but moves into Michel's extra bedroom, the week flying by in a blur of recitals, concerts, practicing hours with the Paris Philharmonics and long, long evenings sitting up with Michel and drinking single malts in a fine selection. It feels a bit like coming home and Elio never thought he should experience that feeling outside of Italy that still holds his heart. It's not the place, he finds himself thinking, sitting across from Michel in his living room, sloshing an expensive Scotch around a crystal tumbler, it's the people there.

It's why he's begun missing LA now.

"How's your boyfriend," Michel asks, then. It's the fourth day, Elio's leaving the day after tomorrow. Rome, vigil land.

"We're still not together," Elio replies with a small shrug that could mean, which is fine by me or waiting is tiring me out a bit, depending on who you ask and how well you know him. Michel, of course, looks right through him.

"I'm not so sure. Are you still kissing?"

"That doesn't have to mean -" Elio begins.

"But what do you want it to mean?" Michel regards him over his own tumbler. Elio blinks, lets his glass sink to his lap and kind of uncertainly fingers it between both hands. He hasn't slept with anyone while in Paris, it hasn't been a conscious decision not to, he's simply felt more like secure and familiar and established than brief and unknown and new.

"I'm more worried about what he wants it to mean," he finally replies.

"Never mind that, you can't change what he wants, but you can choose your own adventure, Elio," Michel tells him, downing the dregs of his glass and pouring himself a new one. "Maybe what he wants will change in response, too. If he really, truly likes you the way you deserve."

His living room's in shadow at this time of the evening, long shadows that crawl across the floor and engulf the bottom half of Elio's legs, moving up his shins, eating his feet, heading for his knees. Frowning a bit at that, he folds them up beneath him, there's room enough in Michel's big, leather arm chair. He misses the light of Lucifer's wings, he misses the light of him.

Missing people is new. Even Oliver he didn't miss, he imagined him back in B, replayed the same scenes over and over, with Lucifer? He's ready to make new ones. Create a whole new film. Again and again.

"What if it doesn't work out," Elio finally asks, voice quiet and a little bit afraid, a little bit smaller than usual. Michel sighs, not an irritated sigh, but a long, slow ones, his drink coming to a rest on the armrest of his chair.

"We didn't," he reminds him, "is what we have now so bad? It's not what we shared that winter, but it's something else and it's beautiful in its own right. Don't belittle the months we had by belittling what they became, please."

He sounds genuinely sad. Elio puts his tumbler on the coffee table and gets up, walking over to him and sitting down on his lap, waiting for Michel to fold his arms around him which he does after also putting his glass away. He kisses his temple and rests his cheek against the side of his face. Michel's eyes are closed, he looks peaceful like that. Elio slings his arms around his neck.

"I want us to be something else, me and him. Not because I don't love our relationship as it is, as it could be on the other side, Michel, but because I think I'm supposed to share something else with him. This isn't enough."

"You so rarely want things, Elio," Michel says, "maybe you've forgotten what to do when that happens."

"Maybe I have."

There's quiet for a while. Michel's arms around his waist tighten, then his hands start running up Elio's back, slowly, carefully.

"Want me to tell you," he asks, his voice a bit raw and hoarse. Elio feels his own body respond readily. Like nothing's changed, like what he has with Michel is, at the end of the day, exactly what he had with him back in Corot country. He leans in and kisses him deep on the mouth.

"I want you to show me."