[fic] sign a new agreement with itunes - iv [france/england]
Excerpt from Francis Bonnefoy’s master thesis on France and England: Historical Misapprehensions and Historic Misunderstandings (re-re-revised title):
… while France and England have managed to be allies for longer than a few days before 1904 (most notably during the nineteenth century, while Britain came to the pinnacle of its economic and politic domination, and France swiftly followed in its wake), their entire shared history is one of betrayals and rivalry. Historically speaking, of course, there were wars won and wars lost on either side; and wars fought together (the Crusades) - although even throughout these mistrust toward one another clamoured rather louder than the professions of friendship and brotherhood.
Culturally speaking, this tension expressed itself via a very definite wariness and a misappropriation of each country’s most familiar stereotypes - French elegance and charm opposed to its (supposed) arrogance and cowardliness, Britain’s strict economy and power opposed to its (supposed) lack of taste, and utterly deplorable cuisine.
However, such clichés are bound to be taken with a grain of salt: people then and now knew not to over-characterize and generalize - and personal, close friendships were to be found between French and English individuals…
From Part I
(College years were a cataclysm. They drifted together like celestial bodies, sharing space out of sheer necessity - they’d somehow been affixed to the same breathing place, for no particular reason other than Fate taking the piss on them, and so they had to make do with that, with common deskspace and Francis regularly losing biros and their knees bumping when they ate (usually microwaved evening meals Arthur didn’t stop to think about twice until Francis came back one evening to find their room crowded with dark smoke, and banned the microwave for all eternity.)
They paid little to no attention to each other or each other’s way of living beyond the one concept that both annoyed them very very much. They had a few moments of communion, usually when Arthur bought beer and Francis wine and they got pissed together - in which moments companionship was their greatest treasure, and they used to fall asleep tangled up into one another. It wasn’t until the middle of their second year, when Arthur asked Francis for his phone and Francis tossed it to him without looking up, that Arthur realized this was something very much akin to any friendship he’d ever had.
In fact, he reflected that night, listening idly to Francis’ soft snuffling on the other side of the room, he didn’t think - whether they cared for each other or not, which would be a question for another day - that anyone beyond his close family knew him quite as well as Francis did.
It was slightly alarming, really.)
They get into a huge fight round the tenth of November, the kind that curls them in, burns them out, gnaws inside them until they’re exhausted and sore from too much shouting. It’s nothing new - they fight approximately three times a week, with various results, over pretty nothings, whose turn to clean the bathroom, no change from yesterday’s takeaway, the coffee left to burn on the countertop. They fight a little dirty, insidious phrases and old drawers thrown akimbo in each other’s faces among all the yells and insults and straight-up kicks to the groin. (The worse argument they ever had was at college, with every plate broken and torn-up classbooks in their wake, and resulted in a grandly one-week cat-sulk from Francis, which he hated, although he’ll never admit it.)
But now Francis shoves Arthur into a wall, snarling, like a pained animal, and slams out the door without a scarf - stumbles down into the icy November air and walks for an hour, throat flaming.
It snows a little, crunching, under his heels. He jiggles his keys in his pockets half the time and only comes home when he hurts, from the cold, from the wind, the pounding headache. He’s got all the anger and all the frustration of the last few weeks drumming at him under his skin, frazzled nerve-endings, making him jumpy and irritable and a horrible cook.
Arthur is everywhere these days, under his nails, the brush of shoulders in the morning, a half-empty glass of milk abandoned in the kitchen table. He’s startling when he’s angry, green eyes too bright and all the tension in the world in his wiry body, his bony musician’s hands that curl around the trumpet and steal his cigarettes - and Francis was a little too mad and a little too afraid and he wanted, he thinks, he wanted to push him into the wall for an entirely different reason, and. And, he thinks, looking down at the doorknob and his key in the lock, this cannot go on, not for long.
It’s silent, inside, until he hears the rattle of laughter from the telly; Arthur is slumped on the sofa, his head pillowed on the armrest, and Francis almost believes he’s fallen asleep, for a moment. He straightens only after Francis toes off his damp shoes and returns from his room with a dry shirt, pulling on a pullover, to drop on the couch next to him. Onscreen, Eddie Izzard is imitating an opera singer, and Arthur’s eyes are a little red.
It’s well after Francis has lost himself in the cartography of Arthur’s feet, bare and furled and one on top of the other, on the cushions, like two little animals cuddling into rest, that Arthur says, “I could,” and coughs, looks away. “I was thinking. I could cook, tonight, ‘s not Thursday, but. Just,” he says, and stops clean off, eyes firmly riveted on Eddie Izzard’s impersonation of a big slimy hairless dinosaur.
Francis impeccably swallows his instinctive Oh god please don’t, and ducks his head a tad closer, because, well. That’s his way of apologizing, making food, usually, and Arthur is clearly making an effort, so. “That’d be. Nice.”
“Hmm.”
“I could help,” he adds, carefully calculating nonchalance. “Do it together, like.”
Something loosens at the corners of Arthur’s mouth, something Francis wasn’t even aware had been there at all. “That’d be good,” Arthur murmurs, and so very pointedly does not smile that Francis can pinprick it all the way up to his eyes.
There is a morning when they’re both awake (almost) at the same time, Francis stepping out of the kitchen at the same moment Arthur steps in, with their too-long limbs, suddenly in the way and unaccounted for. There is breathing in at the same moment, so neither can tell whose air it is they’re sharing, and Francis blinks, and Arthur is so close.
There are his fingers on the back of Arthur’s neck, and familiarity, in the way Arthur blinks up, where the skin is smooth and soft and touchable. There is surprise, maybe, the calm panic that seeps deep into his bones, Arthur’s and his, in this quiet adoration that neither of them can really make out. There is Arthur quirking a smile, or what Francis thinks is a smile and is maybe the threat of a grimace quickly shuttered, and slipping by, under his arm. And Francis looks at his back, in the kitchen, with those baggy pyjs on, looks at the place where his hand rested, where shadows smudge on Arthur’s skin, toward the fall of the throat, the line of jaw and dip of collarbone, and thinks,
Oh.
Oh.
Francis starts leaving messages. They’re the sticky notes in the morning, small and square and yellow and everywhere: pinned to Arthur’s watch in the morning, to the brick of milk, in the fridge - to Arthur’s iPod, in his jeans’ left backpocket. They’re stuck on the door in the evening, saying milk and bread and took your change for groceries; your turn tomorrow, I’ve been doing them all week. They’re his phone beeping to life in the middle of his afternoon shift with nonsensical texts like
ever considered getting a puppy?
and
I’m coming round the store this afternoon
and Arthur’s boss starts yelling at him when he spends half his working time fiddling with his phone, telling his flatmate (fer gawd’s sake, man, leave that boyfriend o’ yours alone! and Arthur doesn’t even think to correct him) to shut his gob and let him work. (It doesn’t matter that he’s got a shit-eating grin on his face for the rest of the afternoon, or that his heart stops - for a moment - when the door opens on too-blond hair and an obscenely long scarf.)
And then there’s an evening when Arthur is sprawled over one of the leather chairs, legs curled around the arm, head pillowed over the other, and listening to London Calling with his eyes closed: he doesn’t hear his phone ping with an oncoming text, only feels it buzzing in his pocket against his thigh. There’s Francis written onscreen, which can’t be right, because Francis is sashaying around the kitchen, bawling - he pulls the headphones down around his neck to check - bawling still to some awful French Bénabar song.
Eating out? the text demands.
Arthur considers matters carefully for a second, and taps in Thai? then hits Pause on the CD player. He’s barely taken off the headphones that his phone blinks up light at him again.
Around the corner? it asks.
I’m paying, Arthur sends back, and can hear Francis laugh, the sound of the radio abruptly turned off. When he looks up Francis is leaning in the doorway, framed in a dark-grey turtleneck and slipping his phone in his backpocket, with two mugs of (probably) hot chocolate cradled in his free hand, fingers looped in the handles.
“You’re surprisingly easy to convince,” Francis says, and seconds later Arthur’s phone bleeps again.
:D :) 8D <3, it says.
They have another few of their not-dates along the next two weeks, although at least half of them are not their fault: Antonio and Gilbert seem to have caught on a lot of things Francis did not tell them (yet) and so they drag him into the pub Arthur’s band likes to gather in, in the evening, after rehearsal. Francis hates them a little bit, for half an hour.
But the evening ends with Arthur’s arm wrapped tight around his neck and Arthur’s face pushed against his throat, grinning stupidly to some joke someone has told; his mouth is slick and warm and drunk against his collarbone, their sides pressed tight together, and sometimes everything, everything is trembling.
It’s a good evening.
(And if two days later Gil and ‘Tonio both receive a box of expensive Fauchon chocolates in the mail, it’s purely a issue of mislabelling and the post not doing its job properly - and all very anonymous, of course.)
This is how it doesn’t happen.
(They play scrabble one evening and leave it off when the association of words they keep putting in reaches levels of homoerotic subtext previously unknown to mankind. To be quite fair, they’re both sloshed out of their minds, and Francis staggers a little, the next morning, over the playboard, frowning and head pounding and genuinely perplexed over all the strange meanings this game of scrabble is apparently trying to communicate to them.
Arthur is sleeping, though, in his bed, with both his arms around the pillow and both his legs around the comforter, and snuffling a little, when Francis checks in on him. He’s got hair in his face and a long, relaxed mouth, and maybe that’s what Francis thinks about when he runs back up the four floors he’s just come down and flies back into the flat, sweeps all the scrabble letters off the board and with them writes
i-l-i-k-e-y-o-u
f
on the very edge of the coffee table, where Arthur may see them, or not, and may answer them, or not, when he wakes up, with sleep-soft creases around his eyes and bare feet shuffling along the parquet.
It’s a spur of the moment thing, really, a change from the sticky notes he had not expected, because nobody confesses with scrabble letters, and it stays with him throughout the morning like a mistake, something to worry his head off about during his classes. Except. When he comes home he throws his coat over the back of the couch, blinks down, and there are more letters on the edge of the coffee table than there were when he left.
y-o-u-b-e-t-t-e-r
they say.
And later, when Arthur comes home, at six-forty-five because there’s no rehearsal today, and finds Francis peeling apples for tonight’s pie, in the kitchen, he catches his sleeve, tugs him a little towards him. Francis blinks at his nose. Their lips slant alongside each other, so it’s not really a kiss, or maybe a very missed one at that.
And Arthur. Arthur leans, but here, now, not into this half-missed kiss but into his breath, through his skin somehow, and with Arthur’s nose mushed into his cheek, and with his own mouth in Arthur’s neck, he thinks, okay, and oh, okay, and - what he needs, right now, in the kitchen, with the thick fabric of Arthur’s coat in his hands and Arthur’s hair in his eyes and all the music of this afternoon under his lips, there isn’t much else that he does need, now.)
That isn’t how it happens. It doesn’t happen at all. Francis’ alarm rings late, and pisses him off, so he shuffles all the letters and the board back in their box without a second glance. It’s only later, on the way, in the tube, that he thinks about what he could’ve done, could’ve written - wonders what could’ve happened, if he had.
He slips, sometimes.
He says, “You’re beautiful,” while they’re doing the dishes, and Francis drops a plate, full into the sink, blinks up startled blue eyes at him. When they pick up the pieces Arthur slices his palm, winces, and then tries to ignore the wet press of Francis’ fingers on his wrist, the sudden proximity of his body, the skate of breath across his jaw. (It doesn’t work. Autosuggestion, he finds, only goes so far.)
This is how it does happen.
It’s late, and Arthur is half-naked and dripping and understandably annoyed, jeans badly on, with a staggering stumble out of the bathroom and a muttered curse at whoever is calling at this ungodly hour of seven and disturbing him through his shower. This is when Murphy’s law kicks in, of course, and Francis picks up, of course, even though he never answers the phone and just happened to be standing right next to it this one time, of course, which is probably why (because there’s no telling, really) Arthur doesn’t go back to put on some clothes and just stands there, in the middle of the living-room, jeans sticking to his skin, towelling his hair dry and glaring.
He’s dressed up nice, Francis, smooth and fuck but handsome as he talks whoever is on the phone inside and out, and Arthur - Arthur was startled, just a minute ago, and then he was mad, and then, and now, he. He wants to pull Francis out of these clothes and let everybody on the phone hear the sounds he makes when he moans, wants to take him out completely, to grapple and scar at his body until he can never say again that he isn’t well-fucked, well-loved - furiously, like a deranged madman, like nobody does because how could they because he’s pretty sure that he’s going to spontaneously combust. It’s completely uncharted territory, and everything was going so well, these days, and, and fuck but what the flying hell does he think he’s doing?
“Didn’t know you were in,” he says, when Francis puts the phone back in its cradle and raises both eyebrows at him.
“Just popping in for a change of clothes,” Francis says. He is dressed nice, flannel trousers and that warm brown jacket he likes so well - hair freshly cut, just a little shorter (at the hairdresser’s, Arthur guesses, pear shampoo and French cologne).
“What’re the fancy goods for, then?” Arthur asks, half-smirking and not thinking at all, looping his fingers in the knot of Francis’ tie, and tugging, just a bit.
“Got a date tonight,” Francis murmurs, and that hurts mostly because it’s unexpected, what did you think what did you think, fool, fool; but then Arthur blinks up and Francis is looking. And Arthur is suddenly a lot more aware that he’s half-naked, and wet, stray ends of dusty hair curling in damply at his nape, suddenly a lot more aware of Francis in all his blond-haired physicality, suddenly a lot more aware of Things Down There, so that when Francis kisses him he doesn’t react, at all.
Francis kisses him. Kisses that stubborn little smirking tilt of his mouth, and suddenly Arthur can’t. Breathe.
And then he can, when Francis pulls away, and he looks terrified, with those blue eyes huge in the middle of his face. In comparison Arthur feels surprisingly calm, in the moment when he curls his fingers in Francis’ tie and pulls him close, again.
Francis’ mouth is dry and a little chapped, and Arthur’s full and warm from the shower; the contrast is frazzling, electric. It makes Arthur shiver, with both his hands on either side of Francis’ face, with Francis’ hands on the ridge of his hip, flat-splayed, and the other at his neck, curling, where the skin is dark and damp, as Francis pushes him back against the couch and Arthur lets him - even though later he’ll swear the leather imprinted patterns on his back. It’s a rather messy kiss and frankly not the best Arthur’s ever had, probably because one of them is shaking, or maybe both, mouths open and slick and wetwarm with their tongues, and the world is, Arthur thinks, shivering, with the mad flutter of Francis’ lashes on his cheeks.
Every inch of his skin is scalding, and then turns to ice when Francis moves away; there’s water dripping from his hair into his neck, gathering in the dip of his collarbone, and he grows cold with the loss of touch. Francis is breathless, panting, looks utterly debauched, clothes everywhere: with too-bright eyes and the too-swollen mouth of the well-kissed, his fine hair mussed beyond repair, falling into his face in a golden blur. He looks a mess, looks as though he’s gone through an intense session of making out (which is no mean feat, considering, for hardly two minutes of heavy snogging), and entirely unfit for a date.
“I,” he says, and then stops short when Arthur rakes a hand through his hair, swallows.
“Yeah,” Arthur mutters, his brain by now on autopilot, because all that petting has undone the first two buttons of Francis’ shirt and exposed a long triangle of smooth neck and throat, and that is - rather fascinating.
“I’ve got to go,” Francis says, abruptly, and Arthur imagines he can see the imprint of his thumbs on his jawline, feel of the ridge of sharp cheekbones against the pads of his fingers.
You like me, he thinks, numbly. Because it’s everywhere - in the tight creases of Francis’ mouth, the quick clench and lax of his hands, the way he just won’t look at Arthur as he gathers his keys and spare change on the coffee table before leaving. And then, when the door has slammed, oh - ohfuck, and, and what, what are we going to do, now.
un. | deux. | trois. | quatre. | cinq.