Warnings: Swearing, heavy drinking, smut. +18
SUMMARY: Timmy is an artist living in Paris in the 1950′s. You come to him to model for a painting but you have an unusual demand for the artist.
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1st of October, 1952 - Paris.
It's Tuesday and Timothée is tired. It's 1 in the afternoon but his head is still aching from last night. It's been seven months since you left Paris, and somehow, life has gone on.
The sun is shining mercilessly bright and he wishes he was back in his studio, so he could hide from it. But it's a place he spends as little amount of time as possible in as of late. Instead he's sitting on a bench just below Sacré-Cœur, wearing last night's clothes, a mess of curls framing his tired face. In one hand a cigarette and in the other a freshly printed copy of the Tatler. On the front page is your face, radiantly beautiful, in a wedding dress and veil, diamonds in your ears and diamonds on your head. Next to you is your Freddie, looking straight at the camera, unnecessarily smug; or so Timothée thinks. Inside the magazine there's an entire montage in the happy couples' honor, complete with exclusive pictures from the high-society occasion.
"Dubbed the wedding of the season this intimate affair took place on a drizzly September morning between baron Freddie Fairfax and his blushing new bride.
Freddie, who is the son of the 9th Earl of Abington, was overheard by some guest remarking over the beauty of his new bride, who was wearing a bone-white couture gown signed Christian Dior and accessorized with a diadem, an heirloom of the Fairfax family that has been in their possession for generations and borrowed to the bride on this special occasion.
The nuptials were exchanged in St Margaret's Church, gloriously decorated with bunches and bunches of yellow chrysanthemums, aconites and white lilies, in front of an audience including representants from most of the royal households of Europe and the English social elite. The reception took place at the Earls 25,000 acres estate in Oxfordshire and upon arrival the guest were served ice cold"
Timothée stops reading and throws the magazine down on the bench. For a long time he sits there, watching as people climb their way up the stairs to the church, and smoking cigarette after cigarette until his throat feels sore. It's a fine October day, the air crisp and clean.
The leaves on the trees changing from emerald green to vibrant shades of orange and yellow. Some have already fallen to the ground. A melancholic part of him, the majority in fact, can't help but to think of it as a metaphor of his life. He'd met you and the entire world had seemed in bloom.
Now it was rapidly fading.
Someone sits down beside him on the bench, but he ignores them, mind too far away to care.
"You are monsieur Chalamet, I presume". With a startle he looks at the person next to him. It's an elderly lady, possibly in her 80's, with hair in a sophisticated updo, burgundy lips and sparkling eyes. She's clothed in an expensive fur coat and with diamonds on every finger. He suddenly feels dirty in his unwashed clothes.
"Yes madam, and who are you if I may ask?" he answers politely.
"Marguerite Beauchêne-Wright" she introduces herself, stretching out her heavily bejeweled hand. He shakes the elderly woman's hand. It feels strangely cold in his.
"And what can I do for you, madam?"
She doesn't answer at first but looks down on the magazine between them. "Pretty, isn't she?" she asks. He doesn't answer at first, doesn't know what to say to that. "Yes, very pretty" he answers at last.
"It was a terrible wedding" she continues. "Terrible".
"And how do you know the bride?" He asks, feeling rather uncomfortable
"She's my grandniece" she says and looks up at him again, studying his face. "She lived with me for a period, here in Paris. I believe you know one another?"
He doesn't answer her question, knows she already knows the answer to it, instead he asks "and why was the wedding so terrible?"
"Oh" she says and swats with her hand, but there's a look of worry on her face he can't look past. "When the bride's wearing the wrong dress, or the bridesmaids won't behave, or the food's terrible, well those are all things one expects at a wedding. But when the bride marries the wrong groom, well, that's not quite as easily overlooked. Then you find yourself actually praying for an ill-fitted gown instead".
He stares at her in confusion. "What do you mean, the wrong groom?"
She observers him with shrewd eyes. "Isn't it obvious?"
