Archive of Our Own

Summary:

Eugene sank his hands into his pockets and tucked his lips inward, biting them. A white-gold strand whipped across Elsa's temple, dancing in the wind. He remembered the way her strands had bannered her face in snapshots from Athens, where the better portion of their honeymoon now lived only in the iCloud he never cleared. She had laughed so freely then, chasing her windblown hair with her fingers while he stood behind the camera. Her fingers were chasing it now.

The corner of his bitten mouth twitched, resisting a smile.

Elsa looked up, meeting his eyes with her own, and asked the impossible: "How are you?"

What he heard was: "Did you survive me?"

A wedding in New Orleans forces two former spouses back into the same orbit after six years of silence. Beneath polite smiles and careful conversation breathes a love still intimate enough to unravel them both.