she flourishes alone. she always has, she thinks, but she just didn't realise it. the delacour family were a tight knit bunch, not exactly on top of each other in the same way her in laws were but always keeping each other in the loop, making sure they sat together for a formal family dinner, never going too long without a questioning owl. a childhood of - not smothering, exactly, but not altogether dissimilar to it - and teen years filled with dorm living and the sort of pack mentality that a magical boarding school and being more than a little popular fostered and then, of course, her big move across the pond. fleur's work with gringott's was only meant to be a temporary sort of thing, but her marriage - a different sort of stifling in itself - and the need of financing some of their life together had kept her in it. always a crowd. always a bustle. it was a wonder she'd ever gotten out at all, but her job, now, encouraged independence. she enjoyed it. she liked the long hours and the way that she could now go hours upon hours, sometimes days, now that he'd moved out, without speaking to another human being at all.
she's probably supposed to be more lonely. dozens of examples spread out across the romantically angsty media she tries to steer from but always seems to find in unexpected places tell her that the woman who's been left behind is supposed to find the house too big and the bed too cold without her man, forced to turn to her girlfriends for constant company, glasses of white & a tub of haagen dazs ice cream. fleur's always preferred red, though, and her taste is a little more expensive than that. she's curled up with a book of her own, lancelot wheezing in restful sleep in the corner, the glass balancing on the side of the couch when the first text lights up the screen of her phone. she pauses, not a fool; it's been years since they've done anything so flirty, anything that led to that blood rushing, utterly thrilling 'can i do it with you?' she places her bookmark between pages in the short amount of time it takes for the next text to come through, silently, and her eyebrow raises. she knows better than to think it a proposition, of course, but he doesn't help himself, does he ? 'of course,' she sends back, after a long minute of deliberation and hesitation. she hates to make it so easy for him, but can't think of a reason good enough to deny him, 'i was only reading.'