Une Nuit à Paris - Fletcher/Jones - Standalone
Title: Une Nuit à Paris (A Night at Paris)
Author: russsel
Part: 1/1
Rating: PG
Pairing: Fletcher/Jones
Genre: AU
Summary: Tom, an aspiring photographer, finds the perfect subject while strolling down the streets of Paris one night.
A/N: The idea was nagging me for a couple of days and I just wanted it to stop, so I sat down and wrote this down. This one, I tried to test my knowledge of the French language (since I don’t have French class anymore) and I’m glad I haven’t forgotten some of the things I’ve learned. :) I had fun writing this and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. ^-^
Disclaimer: I do not own McFly in any way.
Paris is depressing.
Even in the cover of night, the flashing or the people walking down the streets illuminated by them, laughing, joking around, having fun, can’t brighten the city up for Tom Fletcher, who is walking along among them but never with them. Since moving to the city a few weeks ago to pursue his career in photography, he’s had trouble finding friends-companions at the least. Someone who would share his flat with him, someone who would take him out to dinner when he felt too lazy to cook, someone who would spend time him when he can’t find anything else to do. Much like he is right now.
He tightens his jacket around him, heaves a sigh of disappointment, and steps out of the throng, making his way to the other side of the road with a hollowed feeling boring through his chest. He knows he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up to find something wonderful in Paris, but the pictures he’d seen of the city just made it all the more irresistible. Now he knows better.
Misty breaths coalesce with each other as he slips through any gaps he can find, always swirling, always dancing, always disappearing as they replaced one another.
He has his camera slung around his neck, and he knows he should probably begin taking pictures so he can pay his rent, but he can’t bring himself to pick it up and start shooting. For whatever reason, inspiration eluded him today, and the entire day, he spent it wandering around the city without any sense of direction nor destination, trying more to recapture the muse, who helps him open his eyes to the world, than trying to get properly accustomed like he knows he should.
It’s never about the money, though, why he took up the job. Why, he barely makes enough money to his satisfaction. He chose photography because he loves seeing beauty flourishing in places one wouldn’t normally think of looking. To him, beauty isn’t limited to the splash of colors in a flower or the seemingly “flawless” people gracing the covers of glamour magazines. It’s so much more than aestheticism; it’s the feelings, the passion behind each and every shot. It’s about living life, having fun with it, and the moment he sees something that perfectly fits that mold, he doesn’t take a second to consider lifting up his camera and taking that one picture that makes all the difference.
After nearly getting run over by an angry cab driver, its passenger clearly late for something (“Pardon!” he apologized anyway, knowing fully well he couldn’t be heard), he steps into the sidewalk and avoids the spectators who have taken their time to stop and watch the whole thing with amusement. Having no friends, he doesn’t have anybody to hide behind when these things happened, and it’s because of this that he feels even more lonely, more vulnerable now more than ever in his new home.
“So much for the ‘city of love’,” he says gloomily in a half-whisper as he turns a corner, his breath curling right before his eyes and dashing out of the way when his face cuts through it. He trudges on, past a couple with their hands clasped together, eyes looking at each other’s with palpable affection, and he almost wishes he has his own someone held in his hands, looking at him with the very same eyes just as he would in return. The hunger makes his heart lurch, but he tries to disregard it with a shake of his head, and he keeps on walking, that emptiness growing in his chest with every step.
He decides to stop his trip in a restaurant, to at least try the succulent French cuisine he’s heard so much praise about, and the next second, he’s pushing through the doors to a restaurant named “L’Amour”. Ironic, he thinks to himself, as he was just thinking about the very same thing, and he stops to greet the man behind the counter, who in the next moment leads him to his seat with either a sincere smile or a saccharine smirk of ridicule at his solitude. He chooses the former.
“Merci,” he tells the man after receiving his menu, and he takes his moment of leave to look around the place. A condensed version of the outside lines the tables all around, the sound of casual chitchat overlapping one another so that every inch of the restaurant seemed to be filled with very large crickets or something equally noisy. He huffs silently, flips open his menu, and begins scanning for something to eat. His eyes nearly pop out of their sockets when he sees how much most of the items cost. Worth more than his rent for two months combined, that’s for sure, and he’s starting to feel that maybe he’s chosen the wrong place to eat.
Just when he’s about to drop the menu on the table and get up to leave, he hears a loud, booming, boisterous laughter coming from a table not too far off, and he turns his head immediately to look for the owner. He finds it in a young man with curly brown hair, freckles dotting the area underneath his deep, blue eyes, and a smile that could tear the heavens apart with its expanse and energy. Tom feels his heart skip a beat. Something about the way he’s laughing, slapping his friend on the back, and looking at everyone else as though they were the most important people in the world catches Tom’s eyes, and he finds himself completely incapable of turning away.
This is exactly the sort of beauty he looks for, the seemingly limitless joie de vie pouring out from his body that attracts him so much. He feels his hand unconsciously reaching for his camera, and he brings it up to his eye not a second later. His muse has finally returned.
He takes one shot, and then another, and then another, until he’s clicking the button in such a quick succession he’s never done before that he’s worried his film might run out before he gets his fill. But the man is relentless, waving his arms all around him to project his points across, guffawing all the time, in turn making his friends laugh, and the sense of exhilaration is spreading across Tom’s lens like a thick fog that he has no intention of wiping off. His finger is taking a life of it’s own, its action completely out of his control, but he’s far from complaining.
It’s then that his muse tells him he needs more depth, more intimacy, something he can’t attain from where he’s sitting, and he doesn’t hesitate to get up and make his way to the man. He knows he’d be invading his privacy, not to mention cutting through something personal and that he might not appreciate being interrupted, but his body’s propelling itself without his control. Soon, everything else but the direct path to him is a blur, and before he can make out everything that’s happening, he’s already standing right before him, eyes of his friends watching him like vultures waiting for their leader’s command before diving in for the feast.
“Er…” he exhales uncomfortably, their gazes burning through his skin like red-hot pokers, and the man’s large grin mellows out into a curious smile, frigid and inviting in contrast to his friends’. But the scalding sensation overpowers Tom’s system, and his face starts to feel hot, as if being smothered by a warm, wet towel. He doesn’t let it distract him, however, and he’s more determined now to pluck up his courage and ask the man for the picture he desperately wants.
“Oui?” the man asks, and Tom’s heart speeds up at the deep and full tone in his voice. Like an opera singer’s, but more lively and youthful, and he wonders to himself how he would sound like singing. He shakes the thought away and steps closer.
“Excusez-moi,” he says finally, happy he didn’t stutter this time, and he gropes for a few more phrases at the top of his buzzing head that he’d learned in his phrase book. “Je voudrais…” He trails off, mind completely drawing a blank, and he feels increasingly uncomfortable standing there silent and in the middle of a sentence. His frustration grows at his incompetence, and he balls his hands into fists as a silent alternative to grumbling angrily, but he tries again. He’s already made it this far. “Je voudrais… Damn, what’s the word?” He kicks himself mentally for not reading the book enough, and he flushes deeply when he realizes he’d said the latter out loud.
“Voudrais une photo?” the man finishes for him after flickering his gaze from his camera back to his eyes, his smile widening amiably, and Tom feels himself smiling awkwardly back. How can he forget the word? It’s the same thing in English… The man shifts in his seat and props himself up on his elbows, his fingers interlacing under his chin, and says, in an accent Tom’s more familiar with, “Don’t worry, happens to me sometimes, too.”
“You’re British?” Tom asks, relief washing over him knowing that he won’t need to struggle for the words to get his simple messages across anymore.
The man nods. “Yeah, I moved here just last year from Bolton. Nice city, this one.”
All the while he’s talking, Tom’s discreetly looking at his friends, who are all watching the other with raised eyebrows and questioning glances, telling him they probably didn’t know much English and therefore had the vaguest idea of what he’s talking about. He swivels his eyes back to the man and decides he should start getting friendly; to make the process much less awkward, he supposes.
“Been here only a few weeks so I don’t really know the place much,” he divulges casually, one hand clutching his camera, the other digging deep in his jacket pocket. The man grins, reaches for his drink, and takes a sip. The back of his hand is riddled with freckles, and Tom wonders if he’s covered in freckles from head to toe.
“So, why do you want my picture?” he asks curiously after setting the drink down, and Tom, swimming in his bubble of though, is caught off-guard with the question. It shows in his face. “Er…” he says again, completely unsure of himself. He knows doesn’t have a concrete response, merely letting impulse and an unconscious desire drive him this far, and he tries to think of a convincing one right at the top of his head.
“Well, my project’s about nightlife happiness,” he lies, thinking that the man’s probably going to believe it better than his real intentions. “And you’re, like, a perfect candidate.”
“Am I?” the man asks with a chuckle, and a twinkle flashes in his eyes, making Tom gulp subconsciously. This man is making him feel strange inside, and he wonders if he can keep up his ruse before he lets something accidental slip, like how lovable his smile is or how his large hands look like they’d be nice to hold. Somehow, it doesn’t seem like that desire’s lying dormant anymore.
“Yeah,” Tom answers with his own grin, his train of thought speeding off out of his mind and trying to focus solely on him, “So, would you mind if I took a few shots?”
The man answers without even a second’s pause to consider. “’Course not. Where would you like me?”
Tom’s taken aback by the promptness, but he doesn’t dwell much on it. “Where you are’s fine. Just act like you were before I came and… and pretend I’m not here.”
“Gotcha,” the man says with a wink, and the next second, he’s talking to his friends again, starting back where their conversation left off before the interruption. Tom’s immobilized by the gesture for two seconds, but he recover, clears his throat, picks up his camera, and begins moving around, clicking the button when he gets to a certain angle, never letting himself lose a shot the moment he finds it. Soon, the man is laughing again after his friend announces something in his language, and more hand gestures follow, and Tom stops just enough to zoom his camera to focus on his face, to take in every freckle, every stubble, every wrinkle, every inch of his delight and infuse it with each photo.
He stops just enough to admit to himself that this man is completely and utterlybeautiful.
A few more and he stops clicking, deciding he’s got all the shots he needs. To his surprise, however, he finds his arms locked in position, the muscles around them completely unmoving, his finger twitching to get one more picture. He doesn’t know why, but his heart is telling him to press down, telling him as though the world depends on it.
He follows.
He waits a second, and his heart stops when those blue eyes lock with his for a split second, and he knows that this is the moment his body’s calling for. He takes the picture with a smile.
“Got everything?”
Tom looks up from his camera, blinded by his stupor for a moment, and nods excitedly.
“Yeah, thanks a million,” he replies happily, and he shuts the camera off with a press of a button. Then he remembers he hasn’t introduced himself yet, and he extends out a hand and says, “I’m Tom Fletcher by the way.”
The man receives it with his own and shakes it. “Danny Jones.”
Danny’s hand is a bit rough to the touch, but extremely warm and welcoming, as though he’d keep one warm just with his embrace when winter comes around, and he smiles when he realizes it is nice to hold. It takes Tom a moment to let go.
“Well, er…” Tom says, retracting his hand and scratching the back of his head with it. Danny keeps to him, subtle interest dragging the corners of his lips upward into a soft smile, and Tom chuckles uneasily. “I’ll just see you then?”
Danny runs his hand through his forest of curls and nods. “Yeah, definitely.”
Tom tips his head to him, unable to think of anything else to say and stopping himself from trying to get his number at the same time, and he opts to turn around and leave instead. And he does, ignoring the man behind the counter telling him something in French that he doesn’t bother to decipher nor stop to think if he can understand it in the first place.
He’s back outside and the cold rushes past him in the form of a strong gust of wind, but he doesn’t tighten his jacket around him like he did before. He finds his hands too preoccupied with pressing the camera to his chest, like it’ll be swept by the wind and into oblivion if he even as much as takes a finger off, and he takes quick steps back to his flat, the urge to develop the pictures as quickly as he can moving him like a piece of metal to a magnet.
No less than ten minutes, he’s pushing his key in the keyhole to his door.
He doesn’t take a moment to kick his shoes off. He slams the door shut and runs to the dark room beside his bedroom, too distracted to see his feet leaving frosty marks all over the floor. Slipping inside, he closes the door, flips the switch to his immediate right, and the room is flooded at once with a bright, red light. He wastes no time. Danny’s face is still burning in his mind, but he doesn’t want to hold on to a piece of memory. He wants to see something concrete, and this is why he’s too eager to develop the pictures.
He spends a good amount of time trying to perfect everything, making sure no other source of light is creeping in the room, making sure he doesn’t put too much pressure on the pieces of paper floating in the basin of water on the table.
Two hours later, he pushes through the door with a stack of fresh pictures in his hand, and he turns and enters his bedroom. He places the pile on the bed, sits himself on the edge, takes his shoes off, shrugs his jacket off, and flops on his back, paying enough attention not to lie on the pictures he’d labored so much on. He picks them up, pushes himself upward until his head is almost touching the wall behind the row of pillows, and raises the pictures up for him to see.
He goes through most of them with a satisfied smile, and he places the ones he’ll put in his book off to the side, the rest on his bedside table. A few minutes and the pile contains about five pictures, and he’s rifling through the last three. He discards all of them on the table except for one: the last shot. Where Danny’s looking straight at him.
He finds himself staring intently back, and he reaches his free hand up to the back of his head and pins it down. Danny’s electric blue eyes seem like they’re looking straight into his soul, like he knows his deepest, most personal secrets, and his freckled face is lightened up by a smile, not too wide and not too timid. Just right.
He sighs dreamily, presses the picture to his chest, and closes his eyes.
He can still see Danny, still hear him laughing and talking, still see him looking at him in a way that makes his heart speed up and slow down at the same time.
Then he remembers the last words they exchanged, and, looking at the picture one more time, he smiles hopefully, and he wonders if he really will see him again.
Author: russsel
Part: 1/1
Rating: PG
Pairing: Fletcher/Jones
Genre: AU
Summary: Tom, an aspiring photographer, finds the perfect subject while strolling down the streets of Paris one night.
A/N: The idea was nagging me for a couple of days and I just wanted it to stop, so I sat down and wrote this down. This one, I tried to test my knowledge of the French language (since I don’t have French class anymore) and I’m glad I haven’t forgotten some of the things I’ve learned. :) I had fun writing this and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. ^-^
Disclaimer: I do not own McFly in any way.
Paris is depressing.
Even in the cover of night, the flashing or the people walking down the streets illuminated by them, laughing, joking around, having fun, can’t brighten the city up for Tom Fletcher, who is walking along among them but never with them. Since moving to the city a few weeks ago to pursue his career in photography, he’s had trouble finding friends-companions at the least. Someone who would share his flat with him, someone who would take him out to dinner when he felt too lazy to cook, someone who would spend time him when he can’t find anything else to do. Much like he is right now.
He tightens his jacket around him, heaves a sigh of disappointment, and steps out of the throng, making his way to the other side of the road with a hollowed feeling boring through his chest. He knows he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up to find something wonderful in Paris, but the pictures he’d seen of the city just made it all the more irresistible. Now he knows better.
Misty breaths coalesce with each other as he slips through any gaps he can find, always swirling, always dancing, always disappearing as they replaced one another.
He has his camera slung around his neck, and he knows he should probably begin taking pictures so he can pay his rent, but he can’t bring himself to pick it up and start shooting. For whatever reason, inspiration eluded him today, and the entire day, he spent it wandering around the city without any sense of direction nor destination, trying more to recapture the muse, who helps him open his eyes to the world, than trying to get properly accustomed like he knows he should.
It’s never about the money, though, why he took up the job. Why, he barely makes enough money to his satisfaction. He chose photography because he loves seeing beauty flourishing in places one wouldn’t normally think of looking. To him, beauty isn’t limited to the splash of colors in a flower or the seemingly “flawless” people gracing the covers of glamour magazines. It’s so much more than aestheticism; it’s the feelings, the passion behind each and every shot. It’s about living life, having fun with it, and the moment he sees something that perfectly fits that mold, he doesn’t take a second to consider lifting up his camera and taking that one picture that makes all the difference.
After nearly getting run over by an angry cab driver, its passenger clearly late for something (“Pardon!” he apologized anyway, knowing fully well he couldn’t be heard), he steps into the sidewalk and avoids the spectators who have taken their time to stop and watch the whole thing with amusement. Having no friends, he doesn’t have anybody to hide behind when these things happened, and it’s because of this that he feels even more lonely, more vulnerable now more than ever in his new home.
“So much for the ‘city of love’,” he says gloomily in a half-whisper as he turns a corner, his breath curling right before his eyes and dashing out of the way when his face cuts through it. He trudges on, past a couple with their hands clasped together, eyes looking at each other’s with palpable affection, and he almost wishes he has his own someone held in his hands, looking at him with the very same eyes just as he would in return. The hunger makes his heart lurch, but he tries to disregard it with a shake of his head, and he keeps on walking, that emptiness growing in his chest with every step.
He decides to stop his trip in a restaurant, to at least try the succulent French cuisine he’s heard so much praise about, and the next second, he’s pushing through the doors to a restaurant named “L’Amour”. Ironic, he thinks to himself, as he was just thinking about the very same thing, and he stops to greet the man behind the counter, who in the next moment leads him to his seat with either a sincere smile or a saccharine smirk of ridicule at his solitude. He chooses the former.
“Merci,” he tells the man after receiving his menu, and he takes his moment of leave to look around the place. A condensed version of the outside lines the tables all around, the sound of casual chitchat overlapping one another so that every inch of the restaurant seemed to be filled with very large crickets or something equally noisy. He huffs silently, flips open his menu, and begins scanning for something to eat. His eyes nearly pop out of their sockets when he sees how much most of the items cost. Worth more than his rent for two months combined, that’s for sure, and he’s starting to feel that maybe he’s chosen the wrong place to eat.
Just when he’s about to drop the menu on the table and get up to leave, he hears a loud, booming, boisterous laughter coming from a table not too far off, and he turns his head immediately to look for the owner. He finds it in a young man with curly brown hair, freckles dotting the area underneath his deep, blue eyes, and a smile that could tear the heavens apart with its expanse and energy. Tom feels his heart skip a beat. Something about the way he’s laughing, slapping his friend on the back, and looking at everyone else as though they were the most important people in the world catches Tom’s eyes, and he finds himself completely incapable of turning away.
This is exactly the sort of beauty he looks for, the seemingly limitless joie de vie pouring out from his body that attracts him so much. He feels his hand unconsciously reaching for his camera, and he brings it up to his eye not a second later. His muse has finally returned.
He takes one shot, and then another, and then another, until he’s clicking the button in such a quick succession he’s never done before that he’s worried his film might run out before he gets his fill. But the man is relentless, waving his arms all around him to project his points across, guffawing all the time, in turn making his friends laugh, and the sense of exhilaration is spreading across Tom’s lens like a thick fog that he has no intention of wiping off. His finger is taking a life of it’s own, its action completely out of his control, but he’s far from complaining.
It’s then that his muse tells him he needs more depth, more intimacy, something he can’t attain from where he’s sitting, and he doesn’t hesitate to get up and make his way to the man. He knows he’d be invading his privacy, not to mention cutting through something personal and that he might not appreciate being interrupted, but his body’s propelling itself without his control. Soon, everything else but the direct path to him is a blur, and before he can make out everything that’s happening, he’s already standing right before him, eyes of his friends watching him like vultures waiting for their leader’s command before diving in for the feast.
“Er…” he exhales uncomfortably, their gazes burning through his skin like red-hot pokers, and the man’s large grin mellows out into a curious smile, frigid and inviting in contrast to his friends’. But the scalding sensation overpowers Tom’s system, and his face starts to feel hot, as if being smothered by a warm, wet towel. He doesn’t let it distract him, however, and he’s more determined now to pluck up his courage and ask the man for the picture he desperately wants.
“Oui?” the man asks, and Tom’s heart speeds up at the deep and full tone in his voice. Like an opera singer’s, but more lively and youthful, and he wonders to himself how he would sound like singing. He shakes the thought away and steps closer.
“Excusez-moi,” he says finally, happy he didn’t stutter this time, and he gropes for a few more phrases at the top of his buzzing head that he’d learned in his phrase book. “Je voudrais…” He trails off, mind completely drawing a blank, and he feels increasingly uncomfortable standing there silent and in the middle of a sentence. His frustration grows at his incompetence, and he balls his hands into fists as a silent alternative to grumbling angrily, but he tries again. He’s already made it this far. “Je voudrais… Damn, what’s the word?” He kicks himself mentally for not reading the book enough, and he flushes deeply when he realizes he’d said the latter out loud.
“Voudrais une photo?” the man finishes for him after flickering his gaze from his camera back to his eyes, his smile widening amiably, and Tom feels himself smiling awkwardly back. How can he forget the word? It’s the same thing in English… The man shifts in his seat and props himself up on his elbows, his fingers interlacing under his chin, and says, in an accent Tom’s more familiar with, “Don’t worry, happens to me sometimes, too.”
“You’re British?” Tom asks, relief washing over him knowing that he won’t need to struggle for the words to get his simple messages across anymore.
The man nods. “Yeah, I moved here just last year from Bolton. Nice city, this one.”
All the while he’s talking, Tom’s discreetly looking at his friends, who are all watching the other with raised eyebrows and questioning glances, telling him they probably didn’t know much English and therefore had the vaguest idea of what he’s talking about. He swivels his eyes back to the man and decides he should start getting friendly; to make the process much less awkward, he supposes.
“Been here only a few weeks so I don’t really know the place much,” he divulges casually, one hand clutching his camera, the other digging deep in his jacket pocket. The man grins, reaches for his drink, and takes a sip. The back of his hand is riddled with freckles, and Tom wonders if he’s covered in freckles from head to toe.
“So, why do you want my picture?” he asks curiously after setting the drink down, and Tom, swimming in his bubble of though, is caught off-guard with the question. It shows in his face. “Er…” he says again, completely unsure of himself. He knows doesn’t have a concrete response, merely letting impulse and an unconscious desire drive him this far, and he tries to think of a convincing one right at the top of his head.
“Well, my project’s about nightlife happiness,” he lies, thinking that the man’s probably going to believe it better than his real intentions. “And you’re, like, a perfect candidate.”
“Am I?” the man asks with a chuckle, and a twinkle flashes in his eyes, making Tom gulp subconsciously. This man is making him feel strange inside, and he wonders if he can keep up his ruse before he lets something accidental slip, like how lovable his smile is or how his large hands look like they’d be nice to hold. Somehow, it doesn’t seem like that desire’s lying dormant anymore.
“Yeah,” Tom answers with his own grin, his train of thought speeding off out of his mind and trying to focus solely on him, “So, would you mind if I took a few shots?”
The man answers without even a second’s pause to consider. “’Course not. Where would you like me?”
Tom’s taken aback by the promptness, but he doesn’t dwell much on it. “Where you are’s fine. Just act like you were before I came and… and pretend I’m not here.”
“Gotcha,” the man says with a wink, and the next second, he’s talking to his friends again, starting back where their conversation left off before the interruption. Tom’s immobilized by the gesture for two seconds, but he recover, clears his throat, picks up his camera, and begins moving around, clicking the button when he gets to a certain angle, never letting himself lose a shot the moment he finds it. Soon, the man is laughing again after his friend announces something in his language, and more hand gestures follow, and Tom stops just enough to zoom his camera to focus on his face, to take in every freckle, every stubble, every wrinkle, every inch of his delight and infuse it with each photo.
He stops just enough to admit to himself that this man is completely and utterlybeautiful.
A few more and he stops clicking, deciding he’s got all the shots he needs. To his surprise, however, he finds his arms locked in position, the muscles around them completely unmoving, his finger twitching to get one more picture. He doesn’t know why, but his heart is telling him to press down, telling him as though the world depends on it.
He follows.
He waits a second, and his heart stops when those blue eyes lock with his for a split second, and he knows that this is the moment his body’s calling for. He takes the picture with a smile.
“Got everything?”
Tom looks up from his camera, blinded by his stupor for a moment, and nods excitedly.
“Yeah, thanks a million,” he replies happily, and he shuts the camera off with a press of a button. Then he remembers he hasn’t introduced himself yet, and he extends out a hand and says, “I’m Tom Fletcher by the way.”
The man receives it with his own and shakes it. “Danny Jones.”
Danny’s hand is a bit rough to the touch, but extremely warm and welcoming, as though he’d keep one warm just with his embrace when winter comes around, and he smiles when he realizes it is nice to hold. It takes Tom a moment to let go.
“Well, er…” Tom says, retracting his hand and scratching the back of his head with it. Danny keeps to him, subtle interest dragging the corners of his lips upward into a soft smile, and Tom chuckles uneasily. “I’ll just see you then?”
Danny runs his hand through his forest of curls and nods. “Yeah, definitely.”
Tom tips his head to him, unable to think of anything else to say and stopping himself from trying to get his number at the same time, and he opts to turn around and leave instead. And he does, ignoring the man behind the counter telling him something in French that he doesn’t bother to decipher nor stop to think if he can understand it in the first place.
He’s back outside and the cold rushes past him in the form of a strong gust of wind, but he doesn’t tighten his jacket around him like he did before. He finds his hands too preoccupied with pressing the camera to his chest, like it’ll be swept by the wind and into oblivion if he even as much as takes a finger off, and he takes quick steps back to his flat, the urge to develop the pictures as quickly as he can moving him like a piece of metal to a magnet.
No less than ten minutes, he’s pushing his key in the keyhole to his door.
He doesn’t take a moment to kick his shoes off. He slams the door shut and runs to the dark room beside his bedroom, too distracted to see his feet leaving frosty marks all over the floor. Slipping inside, he closes the door, flips the switch to his immediate right, and the room is flooded at once with a bright, red light. He wastes no time. Danny’s face is still burning in his mind, but he doesn’t want to hold on to a piece of memory. He wants to see something concrete, and this is why he’s too eager to develop the pictures.
He spends a good amount of time trying to perfect everything, making sure no other source of light is creeping in the room, making sure he doesn’t put too much pressure on the pieces of paper floating in the basin of water on the table.
Two hours later, he pushes through the door with a stack of fresh pictures in his hand, and he turns and enters his bedroom. He places the pile on the bed, sits himself on the edge, takes his shoes off, shrugs his jacket off, and flops on his back, paying enough attention not to lie on the pictures he’d labored so much on. He picks them up, pushes himself upward until his head is almost touching the wall behind the row of pillows, and raises the pictures up for him to see.
He goes through most of them with a satisfied smile, and he places the ones he’ll put in his book off to the side, the rest on his bedside table. A few minutes and the pile contains about five pictures, and he’s rifling through the last three. He discards all of them on the table except for one: the last shot. Where Danny’s looking straight at him.
He finds himself staring intently back, and he reaches his free hand up to the back of his head and pins it down. Danny’s electric blue eyes seem like they’re looking straight into his soul, like he knows his deepest, most personal secrets, and his freckled face is lightened up by a smile, not too wide and not too timid. Just right.
He sighs dreamily, presses the picture to his chest, and closes his eyes.
He can still see Danny, still hear him laughing and talking, still see him looking at him in a way that makes his heart speed up and slow down at the same time.
Then he remembers the last words they exchanged, and, looking at the picture one more time, he smiles hopefully, and he wonders if he really will see him again.