UP AGAINST THE WALL
The crimson wine sloshed into crystalline wine glass. It was half empty once the liquid had been poured inside and put aside. The blue-eyed blonde often wondered why he didn't just drink straight from the bottle by now. That way, it would certainly match the way his home was so squalidly unkempt and scattered. Papers on the floor, clothes thrown about in almost a hateful manner: some of the materials looked as if they had been forcibly ripped apart. The rooms looked as if he hadn't cleaned in weeks, and he certainly had been outside for a long time either. He'd had visitors, with their horrid, apologetic eyes and even Arthur came by, which was quite an anomaly itself.
No one stayed, though. He didn't let them.
He just sat there in his velvety green recliner, his legs sprawled over the side, wallowing in his self-pity, tormented by his thoughts and by sickeningly sweet memories.
Those sky blue eyes never looked the same after your untimely departure. The circles underneath them were too dark to match his once spontaneous personality. The blonde stubble on his chin was growing out into a beard, and it looked all too haggard for him. Francis had found himself lost, wandering in this thoughts - no, his past. Dwindling in the present wasn't for him. There was no life in him now, as he sat. The only way he found solace was to look behind him; before you disappeared from his reaches.
Whenever he felt the present latch onto his physical body, his emotions recoiled into something rotten and putrid. The faster he could satiate his somatic needs, he could go back to the dreams where everything was alright. In those moments when reality took over, he felt miserable. When he felt as if his eyes threatened to tear up, his cries never came. Sometimes, a dry sob would come of result of this lost sanguinity. Whatever tears he had cried for you had been shed long ago; he was dried up like a well in the desert.
Said sanguinity had been lost so quickly… It had only been a month ago, after all. So abrupt. No one saw it coming. Not he. Not you.
It started on the seventeenth of March, one year ago, when he finally began courting you. You two had shown previous romantic tendencies for one another in your company, but it was only later on that the two of you were an official couple. It was when Francis had given up his title of the Lothario and convinced you to take him, which you gladly did, that your true emotions for each other flourished. You saw him in a different way than others did. To you, he was romantic, not perverted. He was spontaneous, not artless… Your glass was always half full.
You two dated one another casually for the first few of months, but it soon became serious. He asked if you'd move in with him, and you'd, again, said yes. It had been a good day for him; it had made his heart soar, and he had picked you up and twirled you around, your summer dress spinning with you. His laugh was a bright as the June sun that was peaked in the afternoon sky.
That summer was slow; and that was wonderful.
On a cooler day in August, when the humidity wasn't latched onto your skins and making the both of you sluggish, he offered to take you out on a picnic. And that perhaps, one his most fondest memories of you. (Hours of this memory had been replayed like a broken record in his head). Francis had taken you all the way to the coastline where the gulls cried freely and you could hear the waves crash against rocks. You had been situated on the cliff's side, where the ocean was in view and there was shade under a tree.
The way the viridian grass complimented your eyes... And how you laughed when he called at the birds! They were sitting pleasantly in the large plant you two were propped against, and when Francis called to them, they cried back, whirling above you in a frenzy before flying out to the waves.
His eyes barely seemed to falter from your image; those cerulean blue eyes always followed you and made sure you took up his sight.
"Mon petit papillion, do you like the view?"
"Like it? I love it, Francis," the admiration shown in your eyes, and he gave you sweet kiss on the nose, and you nuzzled into his chest. He lifted your chin, however, requesting your attention once more as he pushed back a loose tendril of your (H/C) hair. You looked up, your orbs sparkling as sunlight flooded through the tree's leaves and into your hair.
"(Name), z'ese months put behind us have been, undoubtedly, z'e best of my life. I, too, feel as if I'm moving quite fast, and if I am for you, I understand… But if you would allow me to ask a question, I'd be forever in your gratitude," his eyes flitted to the sea and then to your's again, a soft smile gracing those tantalizingly sweet lips of his.
For a moment, no words came out of your mouth, but you soon had him oblige, with a nod, your jaw open for a moment. Was he?…
"(Name), sweet amour, would you please sip and finish your wine for me?"
For a moment, you were shocked at the rather odd request, but then picked up the glass and almost gulped it down before he stopped you, with a "non, non, drink as you would normally, amour," and you gratified him with a soft sip.
Something metal hit your lips as you finished, and you felt your heart skip a beat.
You lowered the cup, taking out the wine-stained, silver circle of metal. At the top, there gleamed a diamond, the most prominent feature. Your jaw dropped, and he grinned a bit.
"May I ask a second question, papillon?"
You nodded, dumbfounded.
"Would you do me the honour of becoming Mrs. (Name) Bonnefoy?"
There was no hesitation as you threw your arms around the blonde man, knocking him over into the grass, his deep laugh rumbling his chest as he wrapped his own arms around you. The kiss shared by you two was an evident sign that this was going to happen. This relationship that had formed over the course of years of friendship, and only months of anything formal, was turning into an occasion that you'd both remember for the rest of your lives.
A grumble left the throat of Francis as he had pulled himself out of his recliner. His stomach was rumbling with hunger. Though wine had sufficed for some amount of time, his body required something of sustenance and the alcoholic beverage simply wouldn't do the trick. Although, in the past weeks, he had lost weight, it didn't mean he wasn't eating. He just didn't eat as much as one would normally eat, and that was fine as long as he was living.
He slowly padded into the dimly lit kitchen, the morning air coming in from an open window. The kitchen was a mess as well. The dishes were piled up rather high and he knew that he'd soon have no dishes left. Since the maid was vacationing in southern France, there was no one to clean; not that he cared. Francis had only realized how much comfortable when everything was cluttered and dirty. He had also realized that he had also become something of a pig during this ordeal… rolling in his own filth.
'(Name) would hate seeing you this way. In fact, if you were anything like this when you met, she probably would've pushed you away,' a rational part of him argued.
It hurt him a bit: he was nothing without you now. If you hadn't been apart of him, he'd be himself. If he was like himself before - if he acted like himself… Could he pretend to get better?
For a moment, he pushed away the question pressed in his head and went into the refrigerator and snacked on some cheese that was already cut into slices, all the better for his convenience. As he walked out, he found himself tripping on a cord.
"Merde…" His eyes flickered to the object that had caused the ruckus and sighed, looking at it like some sort of ancient relic. Was this fate?.. Maybe. He eyed the living room.
He was a pig.
'You are a pig.'
Francis soon realized that he was having an out-of-body experience as soon as he came back to reality: he was vacuuming the floor; it was looking whiter. This was scary. He soon left this reality, his body on auto-pilot, and when he returned from his daydreaming, the laundry was being folded and his scattered old clothing was dumped into a basket, ready to be put through the washing machine.
This feeling was odd.
He felt… accomplished.
As if simple house-hold chores could make a broken man feel like he was whole again! How silly… But; the feeling was real, right?
'Yes,' he decided, 'it's real.'