[fic] Jaywalking [france/england] - iii
saint james' square
was teeming with doves
and at sunset they flew
across the darling city
to an attic room for two
all the umbrellas in london
couldn't hide my love for you
- the aspidistra flies
(trois.)
He ends his show with Coeur de Pirate every day in April. It's a little pleasure, makes him grin as he slips the headphones off his head and hangs them around his neck. Antonio smoothly maneuvers the recorded finish into the advertisements on the other side of the glass, and then gives him a sharp, cheeky thumbs up; somewhere on the other side of the studios, Ludwig will pick up on the news in a few minutes, and Francis' shift is done for the day. He reclines in his seat, feeling it give and creak under his weight - the desk is littered with his CDs and papers and the half-empty mug of cocoa he slurps down at intervals.
Antonio makes wide flaily signs at him from the other side of the pane - leaving for food, mostly likely; they like a snack after a broadcast - and Francis pulls in his legs into his chest, thinking. This is a good place. It's warm and very big, inhabited by strange animals - they'll never be a family, but they are some very close campus roommates.
It's a place he loves being in, coming in at six-thirty in the morning with a cinnamon bun in a satchel and a cappuccino, leaving around eleven after setting up tomorrow's broadcast - loves the people he meets in corridors, the talks he has with them, the laughs. He is, after all, a very social person. He adores the discussions and the long stays in other people's studios, adores the long lunches, the comfortable clothes he's able to don here, outside of the world's expectations of finely styled suits and polished shoes.
(There is more to clothing love than tuxes and pink shirts. Perfect jeans. Overlarge jumpers. And the long sleeves of blue cashmeres.)
He thinks of Arthur's flat - the faded wallpaper and bright sunlight kitchen; there are CDs and partitions everywhere, crosswords on the coffee table, and a couch wide enough to sink into. He thinks of everything that makes twenty-five metres cube's worth of a life well-made and well-loved. He presses his cheek to the leather headrest, frowning.
When Antonio returns it's with a full tray of chocolate bars and french toast, and non-stop talking. He's looking a bit raggedy today, his t-shirt red and faded, his trousers frayed. Francis reaches out for a new cup of cocoa, pauses, and says,
"'Tonio. You do have the keys to the studios, yes?"
At twenty-nine years old, he has written mental theses on physicality. Bodies in motion. He's a charmer, a flirt, a, a - philanderer, hello. Likes hands and mouths and legs - he rather adores sex, rather adores beds and tables and his partner's smile when he makes them come, when he makes them swear. He's learnt to tango when he was fourteen, exchanged easy handjobs with his Russian neighbor when he was fifteen, had a fortnight-long fuck with his Belgian cousin's best friend when he was seventeen. University made that better, and by the time he turned twenty-one Arthur was a scrawny kid on his radar, one who had constant headphones over his ears and the arrogance of a donkey.
So, right. Bodies. Hands and mouths and legs - the anatomy of making love, if only for an evening. He's catalogued entire patterns, the many ways he can make someone sob with pleasure with a word and a few caresses.
Surprises, when they come, are not usually in the way of grand revelations, but touches - a kiss nipping at his mouth before he leaves, Arthur's cold nose mushed against his shoulder in the morning. Arthur's very bony, very pale hands, curling around one of Francis' cigarettes when he thinks he can't watch.
And this, then. He dozes, an hour or so, lazy and contented, in the early afternoon sunlight. The lines of Arthur's shoulders open like wings, turned away from him, splaying wide. (He thinks of making love, of Arthur seated across his lap some time ago with his hands in his hair, with his mouth trembling on Francis' mouth, and moaning with three of Francis' fingers into him, spreading him open, four shallow thrusts tightly strung. Arthur came brilliantly under his hand, his hands, and Francis pressed his nose to his cheek, pressed slow, drugged kisses to the corner of his lips, riding out each deep, breathtaking clench.)
And now there are worlds to read in Arthur's pale back - his spine a long dipping line, a streak of blue. One foot is coiled in, the other pushed away. The small of his back would be enough to reduce galaxies to tears, to raining comets. His arm curves around the side, falling forward where Francis can't see it; if he sits up, he will see his hand curled on the bedsheets, lax fingers slightly splayed. Now he pushes his mouth against the sweat-damp nape of Arthur's neck and tastes salt and soft and sex. Arthur nuzzles back sleepily, until his back is snugly settled against Francis' chest. One of their feet, whosever, tugs at the other's ankle, far down the length of the bed, curl slow toes around a calf.
They've never done this before but it is quite agreeable.
And Arthur's hand is curled on the bedsheets. Francis considers it over his shoulder; after this, he'll know the colour of his bones - their thin webbing under the skin. When Francis draws his own hand down his arm and up his wrist, it arches back into the caress, captures three of Francis' fingers between his own. Francis could sob just from the perfection of it - they're wrist to wrist, pulse to pulse, and it is heartbreaking. Arthur's short hair is coarse against his nose, but he pushes on blindly, mouths kisses against his neck until he can make him sigh.
They're still sleepy and sated in the sunlight. In a minute Arthur will wake completely, and shrug Francis off like a coat. They will dress. They will close the curtains. They will go out for Chinese takeaway, perhaps, and eat it in steaming cartons with their legs up on the couch.
To all of you ignorant Englishmen - you may not know that zis is now the thirtieth death anniversary of one George Brassens, who is generally considered as one of the most talented French songwriters and musicians of -
"This," Francis says, and then stops to hum in pure, surprisedly genuine pleasure. "Oh, this is orgasmic. This is. What do you put into it. Honey and cinnamon and-"
"Macadamia nut," Maddie says, her smile a mile wide and curling into her cheeks. She leans in over the counter, chin in her hands, with her hair falling haphazardly into her face, grinning like a kid at a fair. It's rare enough, seeing this child so happy, and Francis takes it into his pocket for safekeeping, a little piece of sun from his day. "You like it?"
"If I like - Madeleine," he says, warping his mouth over the words in the hope that they make better sense, "this is one of the best things I've ever tasted, and I used to take weekend trips to Paris to blow off my allowance money on Fauchon cakes when I was twenty. I don't bake that well. I bake very very well." He takes another bite, moaning in joy as the warm trickle of the sweetly slick centre curls in his mouth and down.
Upstairs, there is a crash and a BAAM and a very loud curse in a very British voice.
"Are they destroying my café?" Madeleine asks, hunching down into her shoulders. "Please tell me they are not destroying my café."
"They might be," Francis murmurs distractedly, gobbling up his last few bites and paying precious little attention to the explosions up the staircase. "I will make sure Arthur pays for the damage."
"Alfred will pay for the damage all right," Madeleine mutters. Francis surprises himself into laughing, then reaches out to squeeze her hand, crossing his legs on the high stool.
"Whatever damage they might do to your tables and parquet up there, this will more than compensate," he tells her, clinking his fork on his plate. She smiles at him from under her lashes, and then winces at the sound of more crashes overhead, what sounds disturbingly like a table being overturned and smashing into a wall. "It's good," Francis murmurs, as a distraction. "It is very good."
"They'll scare off the customers," she sulks.
"And Alfred will get a spanking," he laughs. "Not the good kind, either. A proper time-out, no video games, no action movies. Is it true he cried watching Charlie's Angels?"
Footsteps slam down the stairs. Arthur pushes past, slinging his rucksack over his shoulder (leather one, good, faded, a little old), shouting, "It was the clarinet! Jesus Christ, I should have known, it's always the clarinet -" and storms out in a cloud of anger and inspiration.
On the stairs, Alfred hangs back, looking sheepish.
"Did that make any sense to you?" Maddie asks Francis, who is caught in slow-motion, staring off after Arthur's delectable behind.
"Ah. Yes. Non. It's always the clarinet," he clarifies, pecks Madeleine on the cheek, and takes after Arthur at an amble until he picks up with him at the street corner - where Arthur is lingering, his cheeks very warm with winter air.
They steal inside the studios one early April evening. Arthur is shivering; Francis' jacket is too large over his shoulders, letting in cold air, and their mittens are doing little more than their laced fingers to conquer the night freeze. Francis fumbles the keys between them, jingling them against the lock, until Arthur closes his hand over them with a hiss. The streetlight shudders overhead, shifting blues and whites over them.
"What are we here for again?" Arthur whispers, huddling inside. - "Aren't there people around?"
"No one in this aisle," Francis replies, hushed and careful as they continue down a dark, slightly damp corridor. "They are recording tonight's history show in the AA studios, but that is on the other side of the building. Zis way."
"You sound Frencher," Arthur informs him.
"Habit," Francis grins, against his mouth. "My accent slips in here."
"Show-off," Arthur mutters, but follows. They slip inside a dark room, and Francis shuts the door off with a gentle click. "Answer the question."
"I had a hunch," he murmurs, "and then I had a very good idea." His hands shift down Arthur's hips, cradle them slightly, then move away.
When the lights snaps on it's to a recording room; Francis is standing by the dashboard, fiddling with many more controls and knobs than Arthur would know what to do with. On the other side of the thick, silencing glass pane, there is a table, a dangling microphone; and a different kind of warmth breaks in Arthur's stomach, reverses itself into his groin. It's very nearly humiliating, what Francis is doing, what he intends to do with the evening Arthur meant to spend in front of the telly, entangled, hands under shirts - it's, oh, god but it's very nearly the best thing in the world, and Are we really going to do this, he thinks, and imagines the hot red flush spreading down his chest and between his thighs.
"Bonnefoy," he says, and his voice comes out soft and wary. "Francis, if you think we're going to broadcast ourselves having sex for the whole of London to hear -"
"Oh," Francis says, and breaks off, wide-eyed. "Oh. Oh, that is a very good idea. Oh, Arthur -"
"Oh, no. No. No bloody fucking way in hell, Bonnefoy," Arthur catches, grasps his hands where they are reaching out for the tails of his jacket.
"But it is so. So beautiful. Arthur, it is such a fantastic, gorgeous -"
Arthur curls his fingers into his tie and brings him down; drags him down to his mouth until Francis melts, smiles, and he can wrap his arms around his neck. They are standing in a dark recording studio they have next to no right to be in, kissing like teenagers; there's very little light, and it is very nearly gorgeous, this: the snogging, and the softness of Francis' nape under his fingertips, and the slow circles of Francis' hands over the small of his back, dipping lower.
"We're doing your thing," Arthur mutters, nipping at his lips. "Whatever it is -"
"Oh good," Francis breathes. "Good. But it is so very -"
"Your thing. Oh, I promise, just - don't stop that, don't."
They end up like this: sprawled over the table, below the microphone, each's hand in the other's hair; Francis' fine trousers are very tight and very soft, and his belt catches onto Arthur's fingers, leather looping. They're still kissing, heady and warm until they're out of air, until Francis' mouth slips from his with a flick of his tongue, and his hands skitter over his chest.
"So -" Arthur looks debauched, for all he knows, all the red of the world fanning from his throat down his chest, between the flying tails of his shirt; Francis' fingers explore, uncover tender skin, curl in at the edges of his hips. His jeans are open, and the cool metal of the button makes him tremble where it brushes his exposed stomach. "Fuck this, just -"
"I have it," Francis murmurs, his voice pitched low. His hands are quick and sure over his flies, over the waistband of Arthur's boxers, and Arthur thinks, yes you do.
And then: oh, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Francis pushes a grin against his throat.
The world spins. He catches at it, grips Francis' fine, thin hair between his fingertips. He thinks he might spend his life like this: Francis' long, slender fingers spreading and stretching inside him, slick with lube, the slow, conscious look in his eyes as he considers his work, watches Arthur come apart under his hands. He might spend evenings, like this - the hot burn, the tranquil ache - until he's trembling and shouting and clutching at Francis' shoulders and neck like a shipwreck.
"Easy," Francis murmurs - "there. Here, Arthur." Above their heads, he imagines he can hear the microphone crackling, cackling, catching every hitch in their breath and pause in their words, every moan and groan and soft whimper.
"Oh, fuck," he says, very gently, at the ceiling. Francis' fingers slip out, casting empty and cold throughout his body, up his spine - he shivers, tries to reach out, tries to straighten up and make less of a mess of himself; but Francis' hands are on his legs, over his thighs, pushing them apart. He drops back down with a moan.
"Alright?" Francis says, stroking his hand over the soft, trembling flesh of Arthur's stomach, and Arthur says,
"Yes. God. Yes." He grits his teeth against the thick push of Francis' cock inside him - the ache and the full and oh god, that's. Francis' hair falls across his face in a very dramatic manner. They don't do this often enough, and he clenches his thighs around Francis' hips, thinks Fuck. Fuck. You are so. And I. And don't you fucking dare stop.
He catches Francis when he falls - curls his arms around his shoulders and holds on. Kisses him, when Francis shakes, one hand over his cheek and splaying, mouth against mouth and breathing.
They don't do it like this, often enough - Arthur spread out on his back, and the table is narrow enough that he can grasp its other end; Francis standing, weak at the knees, but with his hands steady and sure. It's sex at its best, when the position is pitched forward, pitch-perfect, and so good they're both shaking within the first few thrusts. There's no hurry but the hurry in their bones, and the timing is just right - the urgency of trespassing and the bone-melting stillness, oh god do that again don't stop -
Francis keeps the rhythm slow, and good, and warm - music that seeps quietly into your skin, and lingers afterwards, never quite leaves. They fuck until it's pounding in their ears, until Arthur can feel each oversensitive drag of Francis' cock inside him all the way down into his toes, and the frank slapping of his balls against his arse. So when the rhythm breaks it's less a rupture than it is a shift in measure, a sharp cadence pulling in over a steadier beat - Arthur drags them together, pushes their faces close and hot until he can find his mouth, mash his nose into his cheek.
"Say something," Francis mutters. It's flat and very soft, this: his breath over Arthur's face.
"Why - don't you have anything better to - oh god."
"Ah, please say anything," Francis says, shifting his hips.
"You're warm," Arthur tells him. "You're, oh. So very warm." He puts his hands on his face. "You - fffffuck. You ssay something," he breathes, as familiar pressure coils in his gut, pools low and golden, tucks itself in. Francis bites kisses against his cheek.
"Je crois que je ne peux plus me passer de toi," he whispers, breaking and foreign into his neck, so very French that Arthur keens, arches, and wreckingly trembles into orgasm.
(Afterwards, well. They lie low, cuddling for warmth, Arthur's hands in his hair, until Francis pushes away, and it's like peeling away very tight trousers, very soft, leather maybe, the very comfortable kind that feel like a second skin. He grins like a man with a secret, trips over into the other room, fully naked, wriggles his hips a bit, for show. Grins over his shoulder, across the thick panel of glass, at Arthur sitting up with his shoulders in his shirt, the white fabric slipping off him like cautious wings.
His cheeks are very red and very warm, and he looks rather wretched. A little beautiful. Francis removes the silver disc from the reader, jiggles it on his finger as he returns, with a sigh, and a smile, looking at Arthur fumble with his clothes.
He tells him, "here," and presses the CD in his hand. Arthur frowns at it carefully, drawing his knees up to his chest. One jeans leg is hanging off his ankle.
"Hullo. What's this?"
"Us. Fifteen minutes ago." Francis curls close. "I told you - it was a very good idea I had." Sex put to song, he thinks. Us, fifteen minutes ago, locked together, and you moaned so prettily. "A present," he says, kissing Arthur's temple. "For your mornings, when you're in the bus. Just, you know. It's almost like a song, too.")
And now for the musical epiphany of the year -
There is a pause, just then. It lasts a little less than ten days, and will forever remain in Arthur's memory as an endless spectrum of rain and grey skies and orange reflections against the windowpanes of the morning bus, Louis Armstrong crooning in his ear. After that, the world picks up speed, and there is no time left for thinking.
One Saturday, before Easter, Francis begins his broadcast with Elton John. He puts on Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, and then he puts on Your Song - and that's heartbreaking. That's very - oh. Oh, he thinks. Well, then.
So it goes: I don't have much money - but boy if I did (I'd buy a big house where we both could live).
And then, and you can tell everybody: this is your song.
This, then: Arthur Kirkland in his kitchen, caught, staring. He could mouth the words along with the song, he knows them so well; you see I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue. And Francis chose that song for today. The kitchen opens like a bird taking flight.
Anyway, Elton John tells, to the morning kitchen, to the first cup of tea of the day, anyway, the thing is - what I really mean - yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen. And shivers into crackling fire and Francis' faux-laughter, before Arthur storms out of the room.
(Oh, he thinks. Alright, then.)
Three minor miracles: he finds his phone in the frantic chaos that is his room, he taps in the right number with trembling fingers, and whoever is manning the calls in a little studio two miles away picks him up and puts him on. He hears the sound of his breathing strangely echoing in the kitchen morning, and it takes him a minute, it takes him a minute to realize: he is on air, on the radio waves, and shaking, and for the first time in his life he can hear the sound of it.
Francis says,
"Yes?"
Arthur closes his eyes, presses his fist to his mouth. He says, "About that."
Francis breathes. Very quietly. It rattles against his window, against his heartstrings.
"Are you," he says. "About what you said, earlier. Are you with someone, now?"
"Is this a call of intent? I'm afraid - oh, I'm very afraid. That I am. Taken. I like to think so,"
he says, laughing, and something in Arthur's gut coils tight and sudden and fierce, sullenly angry, all untold secrets - and he wasn't told a single one of them, in the sunlit kitchen and all its cups of tea, the black and white imprint of morning like a very large beast. Purring. He hates calling people, hates the subjectivity of it, the lack of expression on a face he can't see. He can hear himself talking, pattering over the radio, tranquil and strange. It's a little earth-shattering.
"What's he like?"
Francis chuckles, and it sounds like rifle fire; it sounds like the scratch of a match against the box, the slight rattle, the fine hiss of the flame. It scraps against his throat when he swallows, makes the inside of his mouth red and hot with anticipation.
"He, oh. He is, well. He is very, very British. He is foul-mouthed, and infuriating like a very infuriating thing, something with claws. He shouts at me at lot and then I want to take him and climb inside his ribcage, you see - where everything is very quiet and very late evening. I have never told him this. He would think me crazy."
I already do, Arthur thinks, and asks, "Does he know that?"
"I think now he does,"
Francis says very quietly, and it startles him, how loud it is. Arthur shivers with it, and thinks of this: of mornings they did not spend in this kitchen, half-dressed and clumsy, smothered with sleep, with their fingers on their faces, on their mouths. The radio crackling with music, songs he's loved for years - and oh, he's loved so many songs, in twenty-seven years of life. Listened to them and written them and kept them, carefully.
"Arthur -"
He hangs up on him - yeah, and doesn't that feel good.
(Here is a secret, tucked in and wary inside his lungs. He spends that day huddled in a blanket, sitting in his couch, and imagines that his old record player will take him back to the '60s; listening to Hey Jude live - Nowhere Man, Help, Across The Universe - until all the sound invades his flat, impregnates his walls, seeps into him, scratched with time, but beautiful and true.
I'm looking through you, Lennon tells him, and the day streaks into the afternoon, all blinds down.)
Francis lets himself in, quietly. It's very nearly six. He turns on one light, one lamp sitting tranquil and hushed away in one corner of the living-room, and Arthur's face is pale, delineated, from his perch on the couch. (Wincing at the sudden flare of golden and black.) Something plays on the record player, behind them, he abstractedly recognizes as Paul McCartney - singing Sees the sun coming down, and - but Arthur is sitting in vague, overlarge pajamas: his legs are curled in, long bare toes sullenly ducking underneath a cushion.
The lamplight paints his back, the side of his shoulder, in warm colours.
What he does do is sit down.
"I went by the café," he tells him, "and they hadn't seen you."
"I called in sick," Arthur replies, voice raspy and very quiet. He rubs his cheek against the blanket he's curled in, and he's not even likely to be aware of it: this is Arthur at his softest, all the snark and the stubborn in him diluted out. Francis bunches himself up on the couch as well, snares his legs in on either side of him.
"Did you, ah. The Elton John - thing," Arthur says.
"Well I've always liked this song," Francis chuckles. "For an English one, it is not bad."
"Yeah, that," Arthur snaps. "And isn't that just bully for you. Tossing, this thing, this - did it amuse you, the status quo, what, you think I liked imagining you - aw, damnit, you. Just. All those clubs, and you know how they look at you in the street, you do." One hand flops dejectedly to his side, limp and very pale against the dark green fabric.
And they've written stories out of this evening, this - every writer, every singer, they absolutely have, every day of their lives - but this is living it: and it's not heroic. There're no grand gestures, after all, not for this: the tender-skinned, miserable crinkles at the corners of Arthur's eyes, the twist at his mouth. Nobody ever said it would be like this.
Hey Jude - don't be afraid, McCartney sings on the record player, and it's bright, brilliant, cheerful. It sounds - odd, out of place, in this evening, this couch with its catch at the corner and the green throw pillows, the imprints of their bodies. Francis thinks, helpless, We could be living in this song and it wouldn't change a thing. My god, but you are dangerously lovely. I want you like nothing else I've wanted, in my life, and I've wanted so many things.
"You don't think it would have been nice to say," Arthur says, and Francis catches his breath and turns his head. Swallows, and follows the slant of Arthur's eyes on his throat, thinks of his hands on his skin, printing words in black ink, one time when he was bored and had a fountain pen - he spent an evening making calligraphy come alive on Arthur's drowsy, bare shoulders, and it was so, so beautiful. So physically lovely, it was, like a song that washes away in the morning shower.
"I didn't know," he says.
"Yes you did," Arthur snaps. "You're like - fuck. You're the only one who knew, all this time - coming to pick me up at work, sex in the studios, what not. All this. Two fucking years, Francis, and you never said, and how was I."
I didn't know, Francis thinks, a trifle desperately, I didn't, and I still don't, and I thought we had a place to go. I always figured it would be like this, this evening, all soft lamplight and green couches and you, but I. I could make kingdoms out of this, I did.
But he was expecting grandiose events - grand epic fights, fantastic kisses, and sex on the floor until they can't breathe. Passive-agressive scraps of the quiet kind, Arthur's legs drawn up to his chest and his face set in an ugly scowl - the songs never speak of these, and no wonder. It makes his chest cold.
He inches close, nosing his way against his cheek and pushing warm, swollen kisses to his mouth until Arthur's fingers crawl up silently, a little cold, to trace the sharp lines of his collarbone. It's press of lips to press of lips, and soft to soft, while Arthur bites at his mouth. He slips one hand under the fold of the blanket, down to where the skin of his stomach is concealed and very tender.
"We can't have sex now," Arthur mutters. "And wait, hold on. Hold the fuck on."
He doesn't, that's the thing; so gravity bowls him over - the hard shove of Arthur's arms, and an endless span of green, and the point of contact: he shuffles hard onto the floor, undignified and ridiculous, with his legs smartly thrown half over his head. He looks up, spluttering, and Arthur is standing over him, angrily coiled about in his blanket, flat black against the gold.
"You are not listening to me," he snarls, and Francis can hardly help the slight sliver of arousal that courses down his spine, up into his mouth. Oh, this. This is. Arthur moves splendidly in the half-light, great-limbed, and looking fierce, a little lost. There goes the twist of his mouth, and the wrinkles of his eyes: he looks years younger, almost the nineteen-year-old Francis once fell head over heels for.
(Within You, Without You is singing on the record player. There's the arousal blooming red, intense, inside his chest. Fine tendrils of it are rocketing through his veins, flushing up his throat, flooding his neck, his cheeks, until the entire world is hot against them. They say - in the song, they say We were talking - about the space between us all.)
"You're hard," Arthur says, sounding strangled. "Bloody hell, this -"
Of course I am hard, Francis thinks, recording the fact with near-detachment. You are standing over me in a blanket and very loose pajamas, and you are so very sexy when you are angry. We have had the best of sex when you are in this state, look at you - we even have a background song, and you have always liked it, loved what we do. Do not pretend that you are not in every way the way I am, in this.
"Sex by music," he says, laughing. "I like it."
"What is it about me that can make you do this?" Arthur murmurs, the lines of his face too serious for comfort. He looks genuinely at a loss, genuinely puzzled over this: Francis growing hard and flushed over him, over the angry height of his cheekbones and the dark, secret skin at his elbows, his thighs, his ankles, where nobody ever looks. And they have been so stupid, the two of them. At odds, and eclectic - all these evenings on the couch, Francis thinks - and bone-achingly, beautifully obtuse.
"What is it about me that can make you do this?" Francis asks, watching the sharp jerk of Arthur's jaw with hushed reverence. "Because, ah - right now I want to know how to do it again."
Arthur makes a inaudible, embarrassed moan of a sound, just then, and climbs onto his lap. It feels like he's trying to escalate into his ribcage, make a place for himself between Francis' lungs, and that is very lovely. He is hard also, hot and heavy as his weight settles across Francis' hips, and the song shuts out in Francis' ears as Arthur's mouth press against his temple, against his ear, and the curve of his jaw.
"You are dangerous, like this," he tells him, when Arthur pushes his nose into his hair. He takes Francis' face in his hands, palms and fingers cold, and the blanket skitters down his back, pooling between their straddling legs. They don't kiss, but this is just as well: their faces are so close their noses are brushing, and he can count the eyelashes on Arthur's cheek, too dark and too long in the dim light.
"We're going to have to talk about this," Arthur mutters, drowsily. The set of his mouth is near unforgiving.
"We're monogamous," Francis asks, and it's only a very slight lilt of the phrase that makes it a question, and Arthur groans, says -
"God. God yes."
"And exclusive?"
"Yes." Arthur nods against his cheek. "Yes."
"I am not going to stop flirting," Francis warns him, nudging him with his nose. "It won't mean a thing, oh I swear - it is not something I can switch off, it is in everything I do. I am not going to stop, but. Arthur -"
"But when you come back here I will tear off all of your clothes and make sure you know whose bed you want to be in," Arthur tells him. His smile is cheeky and warm and magnificently unselfconscious, and it is very agreeable, to be wanted in such a way. "And then you'll do it more, just to make me mad, we're always better when we're fighting," Arthur groans against the corner of his lips, "I know you are, lazy wanker, it's going to be horrible. But that's. That's fine."
Francis touches their foreheads together. "I can live with that," he whispers. "Being marked. I will like that, I think."
"Good," Arthur says, breathlessly enough. "I'm not, though - I don't, I'm not quite ready to live with you. Share a flat? that. Not happening."
"God no," Francis moans, shuddering - "oh, you'd make my kitchen explode, I like my kitchen very much, no explosions in my kitchen, if you please."
"I would not."
"We would kill each other within a fortnight," Francis grins, feels it slick and bright across his teeth. That's delightful. "We would, we would, you know we would -"
"Christ, can you imagine?"
"Catastrophes in motion," Francis says, entranced. "Oh, it would be beautiful. We would be criminals, most wanted villains, and we would both lose our work, which would be a shame. You would love that. You would write so many songs out of it. The Bonnie and Clyde of the modern age."
"Shut up," Arthur laughs. "No, shut up. You're ridiculous."
The player shifts on to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, crackling as it goes. Last Francis's heard it, Arthur's face was long and lined, tired with early morning, and the song fit. He breathes, in, out, and feels Arthur's chest rise and fall with his, like the dark halves of parentheses. He presses his cheek to his and says, "Tell me something I don't know."
"Okay," Arthur murmurs, and the pads of his fingers skitter down to the soft of Francis' nape, where he purrs and inches close, where he subtly tilts and falls into his spine. "There was this, once, we were in the bath, and. I thought that the water would run over the edges, run into the bedroom, and I liked it. We didn't have sex, that night, you were so tired - I liked it." He mouths a kiss at Francis' temple, at his earlobe. "And snogging, just - making out, that was so good. Sometimes. I'd like that."
"Alright," Francis says; if he's being cautious Arthur's smile is small and bright, against his throat. "Alright," he says. It is, it is fairly terrifying, and they are both hard still, urged fast together. Their hips are snug and warm and good, and that is sex also, of an altogether different nature; it's a heat of a sort - oh, that's fine. It's a little orgasm, a little sun: it's painted red by lamplight, and later tonight it will spread, until it is smooth and faded, like an old photograph. Name it Tonight.
He kisses the corner of Arthur's lips, where they lilt and pull, and says, "We'll make Wednesdays bath days. We'll make everyday bath day," he laughs, against Arthur's open mouth.
You're such a lovely audience, the Beatles say, over the record, and their words are cinnamon-coloured, genius put to music. You're such a lovely - we'd love to take you home. And change to another song.
"I just thought I'd like to let you know," Francis says, "that."
Arthur's mouth is burning, grinning, like a branding iron, and so:
"I wouldn't want you to be anywhere else than on my lap," he tells him, nearly broken: "oh, ever. Ever." (Arthur shivers, shivers in beat with the music.)
They say, It's getting very near the end.
They say We'd love to take you home.
(And then, just like that, unremarkably, it's Sunday. Francis sleeps in late, sprawled in a patch of sunlight like a cat, every limb paw-like, and the bed is cool, the bedsheets blue with morning. Arthur slips off into the kitchen, tucked in his jeans, and busies himself with Earl Grey and whole milk. There's something to an empty bed, after a while; there's something to a live radio, and today there's neither. It is a new state of affairs. It requires lemon and sunshine.
He sits up on the counter like a teenager.
It's a funny thing, a morning kitchen. Very silent. He listens to the kettle sing, cradling his mug between his hands, and thinks about the night before - thinks of kissing heady and warm under the duvet, until they fell asleep with their hands in their hair, their limbs interlocked, and when he awoke Francis was very close, their bodies burning hot. Twins' is closed today; they'll have tea, they'll watch horrible telly, they'll order takeaway for dinner. They'll stay in.
There's a thunk; then there's a very French curse. Francis stumbles in, in blue - which is one of Arthur's jumpers, bought once half-drunk and sense of proportion utterly blown out: it's immense, spilling everywhere, covering far down his hips and boxers. (Surprising, the lack of nudity; but this is an universe wherein Francis Bonnefoy takes an evening off for cuddling, and so surprise is fairly overrated.)
"Coffee," Francis mutters, wriggling his nose. And, lighting up like a Christmas garland: "Oh hello. Fancy," he grins, and it is very Christmas morning-y, all sheep in one's heart, and rapid flares of mingled pleasure and expectation. "Fancy, you here? I was not expecting."
"Shut up, yes you were," Arthur tells him lazily. It is too early for snappy retorts, and Francis looks very good. Looks very nice. Not quite awake, a little groggy, and very blurry about the edges. He settles in between Arthur's thighs, mouths kisses at his jaw.
There is no music, this morning.
There's no music but this, and it's - well, no proper song really: Francis buries his nose in his neck and says, "Je t'aime," so very quietly.
Arthur thinks, Oh.
Horrible French accents notwithstanding, though, he tells him: "Moi non plus.")
un | deux | trois | coda