F I C : paris mon amour .

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."

F I C : when in rome .

4.

They eat together at the same restaurant as always, the one that's been in the same location for twenty years or more, some things in Rome never change, whereas others do. Other things change too quickly to keep up from visit to visit.

As always, his father asks, "are you seeing someone at the moment?" It's while they're getting dressed to leave, Elio shrugging into his jacket, checking his back pocket for his wallet automatically.

"There's someone," Elio says instead of actually replying, yes or no. His father stops in his tracks, no doubt too used to Elio brushing him off with his don't worries and no one in particular, Papa's. He turns towards him slowly, a glimmer of hope in his eyes that both breaks Elio's heart and provokes him endlessly.

He remembers, of course, his father's well-meaning, if there is pain, nurse it, feel something. Well, Elio hasn't felt anything else since. Until quite recently.

"Oh," his father just says. "And who might this person be?"

"You wouldn't believe me even if I told you," Elio assures him, smiling a little bit, but it's a hard-edged, bitter smile. He opens the door to the street and leads his father outside. His father quickly follows. He'll be at Elio's concert in the evening, his last while on the continent. It's been a remarkable tour, if not in terms of musical prowess, then in personal development. Maybe a little bit of both, his reviews have been generally good.

"Will you tell me anyway," his father asks. Outside, the heaviest of the afternoon heat has lifted and people are beginning to gather in the streets again. Elio follows a beautiful, black-haired girl with his eyes and she looks at him, in turn, pausing for a moment in her tracks before crossing the road.

"It doesn't matter who he is, Papa, except that he isn't Oliver and I'm so relieved," he tells him without looking at him, following it up with an even softer, "so, so relieved."

"But has he been good for you?"

"He's been good for me and he's got the potential to be even better," Elio says. They start down the at this point brimming side street towards Elio's hotel, his father will probably have wine in the bar while Elio warms up at the concert hall two streets over. He thinks about Lucifer who's taken him on so many journeys already, physical and otherwise and who doesn't even know for what he's saying you're welcome when he says it by text. Because Elio isn't there to show him what has changed. Without noticing, Elio's pacing picks up, enough that his father is struggling to catch up.

"Elio, wait up!"

He slows down, mutters sorry and shakes his head. "I've been in a coma for many, many years, Papa, but now I've woken up and I want to live my life freely. It's not about him, either I get to live my life with him or I don't, but I want to live, do you understand?"

"Yes," his father says, meeting his eyes directly, no avoidant sideway glances. Elio thinks about Miranda and little Oliver. He thinks about reaching his father's age before coming to the same conclusions. It dawns on him, maybe his father has been preparing him for this moment, too. In the hopes that he wouldn't repeat his mistakes.

Or maybe he's brought himself here, all on his own and he doesn't want to be all on his own anymore.

Walking over and embracing his father tightly, he sends him in the direction of the hotel with a muttered seven o'clock, Papa and then, he walks the rest of the way to the concert hall alone.

The last stretch, he decides. This is the last stretch.