2017, New Year's Eve. Tiny raindrops splattering against the blurry windows. The sounds of London's traffic outside. Aside from the DJ on the radio blabbering about, the room breathes comfortable silence.
"What a year."
His hand lies cold against Francis' throat, sliding over the slender scar that winds its way around, wiry pink, barely visible in the dimmed light.
He remembers. 1789. The people howling as Francis' golden-locked head tumbled into a rather honourless basket. He remembers the hysteric happiness he felt when he heard the dull thud. He was so happy he'd almost wanted to pull his own skin off.
"What a year." France repeats after him, murmuring sleepily into one of Arthur's couch pillows.
Arthur curls into him, pulling the itchy tartan blankets that he's owned since at least the 1940's up to cover Francis' bared shoulders.
There are some little dents there, three small reminders of the morning star that a teenage Arthur slung into the back of his harness with all the force his skinny arms could muster.
France winces as England touches them, gently rubs the pads of his fingers against the tender dips. Those wounds were made with nothing but rage, animalistic rage that blinded Arthur for a hundred years along with a starving need to claim France, the lands, the throne, the person, as hishishis.
That need never truly left, England realises with a shock, pressing his lips between two sharp shoulder blades, keeping them there hot and burning.
Francis stops breathing for about a second, but otherwise does not react to his touch. No screaming. No crying. No fighting. Oh how different it's been.
He vividly remembers the way Francis struggled beneath him at Waterloo, empty and weak and lost and bloodied in his torn uniform. Even when he was amidst a sea of thousands of his corpses, humiliated, disillusioned and beaten into the ground, Francis still fought against his natural enemy like he had a thousand men behind him. Always so proud, too proud for his own damn good. Arthur loved it.
Nothing, nothing in the world could possibly compare to the wave of sickening triumph that flowed over him as he watched lovely silver buttons scatter into the damp grass and he just took, took what he wanted.
The four little crescents etched into his neck tingle at the memory. He runs his hand over them, recalling how France's nails broke through the tender skin and he shifts uneasily, guilt heavy on his shoulders.
France hums softly at his restless movements, shifting backwards, trapping Arthur between the back of the couch and himself. Arthur, for once, decides not to snap at him to fuck off, instead gladly trading the ability to breathe freely for the feeling of Francis' warm body pressed against his chest.
He remembers Gaul on top of him, wicked smile and a tunic with nothing underneath and a field of flowers rustling all around them. Even then, little Albion was already enraptured.
England honestly doesn't even know when it began, or if it will ever end.
Francis knocks his bony hand away from where it rests on his upper arm, softly stroking the skin. "Angleterre stop, that tickles." His voice is laced with sleepy annoyance.
England snickers but obeys, slithering his arm around France's chest to rest on top of the blankets. If he truly focuses, he can feel Francis' heartbeat, slow and heavy, pounding all the way through his own chest, and he closes his eyes, burying his face in golden hair.
Sometimes, he wonders if he has succeeded. If there's anything else besides burns and stab marks and gun wounds and gashes. If there's anything marked beneath the skin.
If London marked Paris. If Albion marked Gaul. If England marked France. If Arthur marked Francis.
If he has marked anything at all and it's not just hundreds of years of empty squabbling and angry sex. If anything, anything but meaningless.
England wants France to feel for him and anger is a feeling. But time passes quickly and the hatred has faded into slight discontent over the last hundred years. The thought of that scares Arthur out of his mind.
He feels Francis lace his fingers through Arthur's own, his voice rumbling against Arthur's chest. "Alright rosbif, what are you thinking about?"
If the anger disappears, England is left with nothing but whatever it is he feels when Francis' blue eyes pierce right through his own. What then?
"Nothing for you to worry about, frog."
He's never been a touchy-feely person, but there's never been anybody who makes him feel quite as lost in his own emotions as France. The flower-crowned child and the little rabbit are long gone, but Francis has been ensnaring him in an complicated web of hating, wanting, needing, feeling ever since they met amidst England's grassy plains.
With France, he knows nothing, even though he's known him for hundreds of years.
He wants to suffocate France and to suffocate in France.
He wants to press his mouth to Francis' hundreds of times, as if trying to take back all the foul insults he's spoken with it.
He wants to take Francis and he want Francis to take him, clutching at each other, breaths mingling, legs entwining and loving, loving, loving.
He wants France to tighten his hands in his hair while he fists his own in the golden curls, and then he wants them both to pull, tearing each other apart at the seams until there is no England, there is no France, there is no Arthur and there's no Francis, just their tangled souls uniting like they did in the beginning, when all of them were one and not yet separated by oceans, mountains and humans.
When he snaps out of his thoughts, France is eyeing him with curiosity over his shoulder. "Angleterre."
He touches Arthur's cheek lightly, just for a moment, but Arthur can already feel another scar forming beneath the skin.
"Angleterre."
"Yes, I can hear you, France." Arthur snaps, with way more force than necessary. He does not know to stop the centuries-old defence mechanism, just like how he doesn't know how to stop himself from feeling, feeling for France, wanting France to feel.
France turns around, England can see the muscles of his chest ripple beneath the pale skin. His hair looks strangely purple the flickering fairy lights that Arthur bought just a few hours ago in a pitiful attempt to give his cluttered apartment some pleasant ambiance.
It makes England feel strangely emotional, the way their old bones are curled up into each other on his rickety couch after 2000 long years of fighting and fucking.
Francis is quick to notice his watering eyes, his thumb rubbing at the tears, hands boiling on Arthur's skin. "England." He says sternly. "Tell me, please?"
"I just.." England begins, then pausing, wincing at the sound of his own voice. Hoarse, soft, scared out of his damn mind. He doesn't even understand himself, how is he supposed to make France understand? "I-"
Francis cocks an eyebrow, lips pursing.
"I'm just.." England lets out a heavy sigh. "Just thinking about the past, I suppose."
While Francis' nasal laugh is horribly ugly, his smile is gorgeous. Arthur, bloody idiot that he is, loves to see him laugh, even if it's at his expense.
"Oh, you silly Brit, getting all teared up over a thing like that." Francis croons, his fingers wandering over Arthur's shoulder, and Arthur's not sure if he's mocking or pitying him. He also isn't sure which one is worse.
"Well we do have an awful lot of awful past, don't we?" Arthur flares up immediately, slightly offended at Francis laughing at his tears.
Francis' lips curl into a smirk, an expression Arthur has seen on that face millions of times during their shared existence, but contrary to the last 1970 years, there's no real edge to it anymore, his hand skimming lazily, tenderly even, over the planes of Arthur's chest.
England thinks of every time France put a blade, sword or bullet in there, in England's heart, hysterically fluttering beneath France's palm, and once again wonders what the hell went wrong, why they threw themselves of the familiar path and into a dark abyss of uncertainty.
"We do, Angleterre, we do." He sighs, toying with the buttons from England's opened shirt, avoiding his eyes. "But that's exactly what it is. Past."
"Don't be ridiculous." Arthur hisses. "If we're going to do all of..."
He gestures vaguely towards the coffee table with the two empty wine glasses and a half eaten camembert, to Francis' shiny loafers, footwear that's way too cold for London in this time of year, lazily thrown onto Arthur's heavy woollen rug.
None of those objects really succeed in getting his message across, so he just says. "-all of this, we should at least talk about..you know.."
The horrible things you've done to me. The horrible things I've done to you. The things I want to do to you.
Arthur hears his own voice soften, waver uncertainly into the tense silence. "-we should talk about..about.."
France looks at him expectantly, and England chokes on his words. "We're-We're enemies, France!"
Are we, still?, he wonders miserably as the words hang heavily in the air between the two of them and Francis' eyes darken a little.
"Oui, England, I am aware of that. You made it quite clear with your little Brexit stunt." France says coldly. "And we're also old. If we dwell on the past for too long we might get stuck in it forever."
Part of England would like that, travel back to times were all he and France did was hurt and destroy, dragging every other nation and human who dared to mingle with them into their vicious battles. It was easier when he could actually pretend hatred was all he felt for the nation on the other side of the Channel.
"Well I'm sorry, but I can't just sit here and go: ah jolly fucking new year my darling frog, cheers to another year of tearing each other's head off and fuckin' each other's brains out." Arthur spits at him, tears of frustration pricking at the corners of his eyes. He just hates all of it, all of it, years and years and years of history that cannot be changed and a future which cannot be seen.
"That's how it's always been." France says softly and Arthur isn't sure if he's imagining the melancholic tone of his voice.
"Yeah well, that's the entire fucking problem." Arthur says shakily. "This." He gestures to their half-dressed bodies, the way his own arm is loosely draped over Francis' shoulders, the way their chests are pressed together, the way France's hand is curled into the front of Arthur's shirt. "Isn't any of that."
"No. It's not." France agrees dryly and for a moment England truly wants to throttle him, the infuriating bastard. He's always enjoyed England's suffering, but does he not understand, understand that they're losing everything they know?
"Then what?" Arthur breathes helplessly, clutching at France like a dying man. "What are we doing, France? What is this?"
Francis is dangerously close to him, one of his legs hooked around Arthur's hip. Arthur can smell his sour-wine breath, his lips inches from his own. "You think I know?" He whispers, and for a second he looks just as lost as England feels. "You truly think I know?"
Heavy silence follows, only to be interrupted by a cheesy song on the radio, so ridiculously cheerful it seems like it's made to mock the two of them, hands tightly entwined, eyes darting over the other's face in a hopeless search of something old, something familiar, something to despise. It's not there.
"Let's find out then, shall we?" England mutters at last, and within seconds France's lips crash into his own.
Two tired bodies finally melting into each other, trembling hands grasping everywhere they can reach, enveloping each other in an unfamiliar heat while their mouths desperately move against one another. Paris collides with London as Gaul embraces Albion and England and France unite.
And as Arthur helplessly arches into the scorching kisses Francis places on his chest, somewhere outside Big Ben loudly announces the beginning of the New Year.