Chapter Text
May 2025 - The Final Days of Filming Season One
“You were quiet back there.”
It was the first thing Connor said when he walked over to the man standing in the corner of the terrace of the small hotel they were staying in, smoking his cigarette in silence.
The terrace had emptied out. The table where the crew - everyone staying at the hotel and free in the evenings - usually gathered for dinner was now deserted. It had been more than two hours since Jacob left. One by one, the members of the set crew had withdrawn to their rooms.
Hudson had also left not long ago, taking his girlfriend Katelyn - who had visited the set that day - with him.
Connor, however, hadn’t been able to leave.
Not until only he and François remained.
François stood at the edge of the terrace, watching the distant view while slowly smoking his cigarette.
Lately, Connor had noticed something about himself. He had started having trouble leaving.
Leaving places where François was.
He didn’t want to go.
In fact, he wanted the opposite - to stay somewhere within François’s orbit.
The man, lost in his cigarette, lifted his head at the sound of Connor’s voice and glanced back at him over his shoulder. Only then did he seem to notice that the terrace had emptied.
He smiled faintly at the boy approaching him.
At first he said nothing.
He took another drag from his cigarette and turned his gaze back toward the view.
“I didn’t agree with them.”
Connor immediately understood what he meant.
He was talking about the conversation that had taken place at the table a few hours earlier. It had turned into a surprisingly heated discussion about what love meant to each of them.
Jacob had shrugged.
To him, love was quiet, calm - something that existed between two people. There was no need to shout loudly just to prove it was there. Whether people saw his relationship or not didn’t matter to him. As long as they could exist side by side, hiding the relationship he was in wouldn’t be a problem.
Being able to live his love the way he wanted was the only thing that mattered.
Fair, Connor had thought. What else would you expect from a queer man? The world still wasn’t safe enough for queer people.
Hudson, on the other hand, believed the exact opposite.
According to him, there shouldn’t be a single person in the world who didn’t know he was in love. Love was something made of big gestures and grand displays. It should be lived loudly and openly - more cinematic, more dramatic.
Very straight. Very actor, Connor had thought.
Connor leaned his shoulder against the terrace wall.
“So which one do you disagree with?” he asked. “Jacob or Hudson?”
François let out a short breath. He pulled the cigarette from between his lips with two fingers and released the smoke slowly into the night.
“Not exactly either of them.”
Connor tilted his head slightly.
“What do you mean?”
François didn’t answer immediately. He looked out at the dark silhouette of the city, at the scattered lights across the night. As if the sentence he was about to say belonged more to the view than to Connor.
“I don’t think love needs to be loud,” he said at last. “But I also know that silence isn’t always as innocent as people think.”
Connor frowned. There was something in François’s voice now that hadn’t been there at the table earlier. It was calmer, flatter - but heavier.
“What do you mean by that?”
François flicked the ash from his cigarette against the railing.
“My father married my mother later,” he said. “He had already gone against everyone for her. When it came out that he’d cheated on his first wife with my mother, things had been messy enough.”
A small, bitter smile crossed his face.
“He married her in the end. But it didn’t fix anything.”
Connor’s attention shifted fully to him now.
François continued.
“He never really let her into his life. People might have known he was married, but no one knew my mother. He never took her to work dinners. Never brought her to gatherings with friends. Never to events.”
He paused.
“Everyone in my father’s life knew he had a wife. They just never saw the woman in that marriage.”
He fell silent.
Connor didn’t speak. Something about interrupting François’s silence felt wrong.
“My mother was always there,” François said after a moment. “But she was always outside the frame.”
His lips tightened slightly.
“He wasn’t exactly hiding her. What he did was worse.”
Connor felt his throat tighten.
“He made her invisible.”
François flicked the ash from his cigarette and watched it fall into the dark.
“If there was a photograph,” he said quietly, “my father always made sure she was standing somewhere outside the frame.”
Connor didn’t realize he had taken a small step closer until the cigarette smoke drifted between them.
“What do you mean?”
François shrugged faintly.
“Sometimes she would get ready when he was about to leave somewhere. Maybe this time he would take her. Maybe this time he would want her standing beside him.”
He took another drag from his cigarette.
“But he always found a reason. Too formal. Too crowded. Not appropriate.”
A small pause.
“Sometimes he said he didn’t want her to become the center of people’s judgment. Sometimes he said nothing at all.”
He looked out at the dark city again.
“He would just leave alone.”
“After a while,” François said quietly, “my mother realized there was no place meant for her in his life.”
He looked out at the city again.
“Not at the table. Not in the room.”
A brief pause.
“Not even in the frame.”
Silence settled between them. Somewhere below the terrace a distant car passed, and then the night returned.
“Some people want the whole world to know they’re loved,” François said.
This time he turned his head and looked at Connor. There was nothing harsh in his expression, only the shadow of something very old.
“My mother would have settled for one room.”
Connor couldn’t say the first thing that came to mind. The simplicity of the sentence carried too much weight.
For a strange moment, he had the absurd thought that if François ever asked for a room, Connor would make space for him in every one he had.
François turned back to the view.
“That’s why I don’t think like Hudson,” he said. “Love doesn’t need to become a performance. The whole world doesn’t need to know.”
He glanced down at the cigarette between his fingers.
“But I can’t think like Jacob either. Love can exist between two people, yes. But if you keep the person you love in the shadows long enough…”
The corner of his mouth curved slightly.
“…you’re not protecting them anymore.”
A small pause.
“You’re erasing them.”
Connor straightened slightly.
He didn’t step closer to François, but his voice softened.
“Did your mother realize that?”
François laughed quietly. There was neither amusement nor mockery in it.
“Every day,” he said. “And it destroyed her.”
He didn’t bring the cigarette back to his lips this time. He simply held it between his fingers and let it burn out.
“No one can live very long without noticing there’s no place made for them in the room.”
Connor looked at him.
What he saw now wasn’t François’s usual calmness, but something behind it. Something that had been hidden very carefully for years. Maybe older than anger.
Hurt.
Not shame - but the mark that someone else’s shame leaves behind.
Connor didn’t know what to say.
It wasn’t something you offered condolences for. It wasn’t something you could comfort.
So he simply stayed there beside him.
Looking at the same view. Sharing the same night.
Finally he asked quietly, almost without thinking:
“And you?”
François lifted his eyebrows slightly.
“What about me?”
Connor hesitated, but didn’t back away.
“You,” he said carefully. “If someone loved you someday… how would you want to be loved?”
The moment he said it, Connor wondered if it had been a stupid question. Of course François had been loved before.
The question hung in the air for a moment.
Connor half expected François to brush it off.
But then François lifted his head and looked at him.
Directly.
Not long enough to be called a stare - but long enough that it couldn’t simply pass.
Then, without looking away from Connor’s face, he answered.
“Inside the frame.”
March 2027
“François Arnaud’s new boy: Meet Jack Cameron Kay — everything we know so far. A thread.”
Connor stared at the words.
And just like that, February 2026 came back.
The silence of it.
The last conversation that hadn’t really been a conversation at all.
Connor blinked once and the memory slipped away.
The thread was finally open on his screen.
He finally moved his thumb.
The first photograph appeared.
François.
Connor scrolled.
Another photo loaded.
François again.
This time someone stood beside him.
Connor looked closer.
Jack.
He stopped scrolling.
Then, slowly, he kept going.
Another picture.
François and Jack.
Another.
Another.
Connor’s thumb slowed.
Every photo.
Every frame.
The same two people.
Connor stared at the screen.
And without meaning to, he heard François’s voice again.
A quiet terrace.
Cigarette smoke dissolving into the night.
Inside the frame.