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warnings for: a shit ton of pairings (like i am not even going to bother listing them) and non-explicit-ish sex and angst. also i use the word and a lot but if you've read anything i've ever written you should know that already.
disclaimed.
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can you count all the loves that didn't last:
"I think – You know – this isn't working."
Arthur is sitting across from him – he's methodically adding sugar and cream into his tea as he speaks, Francis remembered him badgering the waitress for it, and then she'd slammed a box of sugar and a jug of milk on the table. Arthur hadn't even appeared angry. Not like on their third date two years ago when Francis had presented with a single rose, not like then when he threw it on the ground and scowled and then proceeded to kiss the fuck out of him until they'd practically been having sex in the middle of the street on the fourteenth day of June.
His eyes are a searing emerald, but Francis only knows that from four years of dating and six months of fucking and two days of knowing him, because right now Arthur is staring down. He sets down the spoon, with his eyes still fixed on the table.
"What?" He says, because this is something like his world falling apart in slices of emerald and blonde and bitter tea.
He thinks about how Arthur always hated this Indian restaurant and Francis made him go because hate-sex with Arthur was hot.
He thinks about how Arthur only makes coffee when he's feeling guilty and about the espresso he had this morning.
He thinks about how Arthur kissed him on the cheek this morning, when they woke up and the sheets were clean and fresh and smelled something like roses.
"We – we aren't working." Arthur is speaking in all these disjointed sentences, not like he's about to cry but more like this is the last thing he wants to do at this moment in time. Like he'd rather be in a cozy chair reading all his classics than with in any vicinity of Francis.
"What?" Francis says again, but that's because it's all he can think about doing. He can't think about waking up the next morning with Arthur or Arthur's tea mug with the chipped handle not sitting on the counter next to the antique teapot that Francis had bought for his birthday last year and all those first edition fairy tale books being gone.
"I am breaking up with you." This time his voice has a bit of steeliness in it and all the confidence in the world and Francis wants to kiss him, really he does.
He doesn't.
"Is this… about Alfred?"
And Arthur doesn't say anything, but he's silent, and it sounds something like death. He's looking down again, like he's studying the table. Arthur – who's never been shy, who punched him in the face when they first met each other and blew him underneath a table in the library on their second date and Arthur, Arthur who is leaving him for a blonde golden boy who smiles like the sun and argues with him and makes Arthur light up like nothing else.
Arthur leaves and Francis stays at the table with an empty teacup and nothing else.
.
He ends up back at his apartment something like four hours later – not because he sat there the whole time, because he took the long way so he could go through the park and pick roses with the thorns still on and stare at the happy couples sitting and having picnics with each other and holding shoes in their hand as they walk barefoot through the grass and he and Arthur could never be that kind of couple, but he can see Alfred-and-Arthur being that. The kind of couple who goes to nice restaurants and has dates that don't end in messy hand jobs in the men's bathroom.
Arthur's mug is gone and so are the books and even one of the only pictures Francis had of the two – Arthur is smirking at him and Francis is holding the camera and kissing his cheek and it's the stupid kind of picture middle school girls have on their facebook walls, but it made him happy. And Arthur had taken it like he was trying to be a ghost, like he was trying not to exist, like he was cutting off every single connection that he'd ever had with an angry British boy who liked tea and sweaters and literature.
Something snaps inside him – something like lightning, sharp and fast.
He thinks about before Arthur when he had a new body in bed every night and a new story behind his face at every bar and things like girls with long dark hair and legs that went up to there and men with tan skin and washboard abs, who he could make moan with barely a flick of his tongue.
He thinks about things people do to get over break ups.
He thinks about how he's always hated knitting – well not really, just since four hours ago – and how he's really pretty fucking fantastic at sex.
.
It starts with Gilbert and Antonio, and by that he means it starts somewhere between his sixth beer and the point in which he finds himself sandwiched between Gil – who is pale and smells like beer and sweat and tastes a bit like heartbreak – and Antonio – who has dark hair and smiles at him and does things with his tongue that makes his toes curl – in his own four poster bed, the sheets the same as they were before Arthur left.
They're best friends though, so Francis knows that Gilbert has been through this before and he knows that Antonio loves Lovino, but the kid is seventeen and Antonio hasn't not had sex since he was a year younger than that, and Francis knows that because Antonio was his first time kissing a guy at age fifteen, all awkward groping and smiles and tongue. They spend half the time laughing and then taking swigs from a wine bottle that had been a present from Arthur and in between sucking Gil off and Antonio pouring wine on the both of them and licking it off, they talk about life and love and sex and how Gilbert fucked Katka he says something about how her "boobs fucking defied gravity" and Antonio laughs and it all leads into the whole which-Braginski-is-hottest debate because Gil – who is mostly straight with a few exceptions – always say Katka and Antonio thinks it's Ivan and Francis thinks it's Natalia because she likes to read obscure Russian literature and he hasn't slept her yet and that in itself is kind of a miracle. Also he likes her eyes. Only before they could really get into the debate, and they've had it a thousand times but never come to a decision, Antonio kisses him and then Gilbert is swigging more wine and his hand is on Francis's hip and he decides to return the blowjob he'd gotten before, so the entire thing is forgotten.
Francis wakes up the next morning, naked and sweating and his sheets are stained with red wine so he'll have to throw them out. Antonio is in the kitchen making coffee that won't taste like regret and secrets and Gilbert is on the floor with a pillow over his head.
They do it all again a week later.
.
He ends up at bars after that, with lots of pretty girls dancing and men in tight shirts and drinks in vibrant colors.
Somewhere in the background, two blonde men are falling in love and Antonio is worried about him and Gilbert is closing his eyes and pretending it isn't going on because he remembers things like girls with green eyes and men who play the piano with too-long fingers and downward spirals.
Next thing – he's in bed with Belle.
Belle is wild and crazy and her hair is short and blonde and tickles his neck. She's got green eyes too, and it's a little – well. But she smells like chocolate and when he found her at a bar she was drinking straight up gin, so before the hour was out they were crashing against doors and walls and even the front of the taxi when Francis attempts to untangle himself to pay the cab driver – who is watching them with an amused smile and gives Francis a thumbs up.
She kisses with teeth and her tongue is sharp and something about her feels gritty and salty, like she spends too much time at the beach and never bothers to shower.
In the morning, he has bruises and hickeys and a cramp in his left leg, and she's gone – with a scribbled note that says something like we should do this again sometimes ;) and he laughs a bit because he remembers in 8th grade how she used to have glasses and read comic books and he wonders if she'd be into a Catwoman thing, with all that skintight leather and he could be her Bruce Wayne.
(In the end she's just another one night, but he'd still be her Batman any day.)
.
Lili is tiny and dressed in black and quite obviously trying to be a rebel. He remembers this other girl, this girl before even Arthur who rode horses and cursed worse than him and who's rotting in a cemetery somewhere now, and he kisses her.
She kisses back, but she's quiet and unsure of herself and he can't bring himself to do much else so they part on amicable terms, at least until the next morning when her brother punches him out.
.
In the space of three weeks in September he sleeps with all three of the Braginski's and Gilbert and Antonio both have to pay him fifty dollars. He spends it on wine and condoms that all three of them use, but it's really about the satisfaction thing.
But here's how it happens –
He sees Ivan at a coffee shop one day; drinking hot chocolate and watching the trees change color. Francis is hung-over and his head is pounding and Ivan offers to buy him coffee.
Ivan has a pretty smile and the coffee is black, so Francis sits down and they talk about the weather and flowers.
They meet there every day for a week, and Francis doesn't go out to bars every night, because this a bit – well. It's almost like there's something there.
"I have heard that Alfred and Arthur have moved in together." Ivan adds, on the eighth day.
He thinks about fairy tale books and classics crammed together with Captain America comics and those shitty sci-fi novels and a shelf full of movies and a high tech coffee maker next to that antique tea pot with the pink flowers.
He thinks about how Ivan and Alfred used to – not date, but Ivan used to stare at Alfred with big, moony eyes and they used to hold hands under the table and that one time on Alfred's birthday when Ivan brought him a bouquet of sunflowers and Alfred had laughed and thrown them into the bin.
He thinks about aristocratic features and how Ivan might kiss like Arthur does, hard and fast like the world is ending beneath their feet.
And so he leans across the wobbly coffee shop table and presses his lips to Ivan's. They're cold, even though the Russian's cup of hot chocolate is half full.
.
Ivan's apartment is sparsely decorated, and there are pictures adorning the black coffee table next to the small couch where Francis is currently being very thoroughly fucked.
One of his sisters – Katka is smiling and Natalia is not, and another of Toris and Eduard and Raivis, though there's an arm draped in a pink sweater dragging Toris out of the frame and then there's one of Alfred, smiling but with his glasses askew and Mathieu is dressed in hockey gear and one of a sunflower that looks like it came with the frame and Ivan whimpers when he comes. Francis follows soon after, and he's staring at a picture of green eyes and ashy blonde hair.
He kisses Ivan again and leaves through the front door and he feels a little wrong and a little dirty, so he goes out to the farmers market and buys a dozen sunflowers – freshly cut and still smelling like hope and peace and dreams, or something like that. Mostly they just smell like flowers and dirt.
When he gets back the apartment, one of the pictures is smashed on the ground and Natalia is sitting primly on a rocking chair.
"Brother is sleeping, if you're looking for him." She says, and he watches her legs as she uncrosses them and crosses them.
"I brought flowers." He says and she gets him some water and then she smells his neck and says something like fuck you and they have sex on the same couch that he had just vacated three hours earlier.
If the first part weren't so pathetic, it might make a great story to tell. But he remembers Ivan's heartbroken eyes and Natalia's flinty stare and it doesn't really feel like the kind of thing to tell at parties.
(And Katka is to round out the trio because she's always been a bit easy and he tells her that she has pretty eyes and before the end of the week she's got her legs wrapped around his waist and he's got his face buried into that magnificent chest of hers and if it didn't feel so good, he might be a horrible person.)
.
After that he goes back to clubs and bars and nothingness – it works for him.
Kiku has a large collection of sex toys and he must have fucked him at least five times and Feliciano drools in his sleep and licks his face when they kiss and Matthias is more flexible than he looks and Mei comes almost sickeningly quickly when he presses a hand to her clit and Sadiq cries out another man's name and Ludwig likes biting and barks out orders that make Francis tingle all over and Michelle screams so loud it shakes the walls.
It all becomes a blur, so exhausting that he barely has time to think. It's what he wanted.
He thinks about he doesn't really know when he fell in love with Arthur, but it had something to do with the way his eyebrows crinkled together when he thought and the way he smelled like tea and rainy days and the way he said frog and the way he thought he could cook.
He thinks that maybe Arthur was never in love with him.
He thinks about how numb has got to be better than thinking about that.
.
One day he wakes up with a hangover and a rumpled blonde in his bed. For a second his heart rate quickens and something rises up in his throat like hope and bile, but then dewy violet eyes blink open and it's Mathieu.
It's one thing he sort of regrets – because Mathieu is something like untouchable, but then everyone gets drunk and sleeps with that one person they're not supposed to. Even the little kid who was a freshman when he was a senior, who used to drag around a teddy bear when he was younger that he still has sitting on his bed in his apartment and – well. It's Mathieu.
He takes a deep breath and flops over on his side so he's staring at the smaller man.
"Are you okay?"
"Of course, darling."
"Arthur misses you."
Francis stiffens. "That's a lie."
"It isn't." And he sounds so earnest that it could be heartbreaking, if his heart weren't already shattered and scattered all over bedrooms and living room floors throughout the city.
"Doesn't matter. I don't miss him."
"That's a lie."
It is, but Francis won't admit it. Mathieu already knows it anyway, because he's a little bit invisible and knows everything.
He thinks about how he used to drive Mathieu to school and he would drum on the dash while Francis kept time on the steering wheel, singing along to old crooning men who sang about lost love and bad Canadian rock bands that sang about zebras and nuns. The ride lasted seven minutes and Mathieu was three years younger than him but for eight minutes he remembers, they also had time for three songs and just the start of one more and they never talked, but then he went to college and met Arthur.
He thinks about how Arthur listened to all these British punk bands and didn't like singing.
He thinks that part of him wishes he fell for Mathieu, only he didn't, and it's no use wishing otherwise.
"I hope you're okay." The smaller blonde adds as he throws on his shirt, preparing to leave. "I'll stay if you don't want to be alone."
And for once, that's what Francis needs to be so he waves Mathieu out the door.
He's humming snatches of some song that they used to listen to, but Francis doesn't recognize it.
.
(And if he's getting into his past – there was a girl in high school with golden hair who killed himself after he told her i love you and maybe that's Freudian and it explains a lot of things, or maybe it never really mattered in the long run at all and she was just a girl and there was never any love.)
.
Francis ends up in the apartment building that Alfred-and-Arthur live in, and he thinks about asking the doorman what apartment they live in, only he doesn't.
He waits out in the lobby and thinks that he doesn't even miss him anymore.
It's a lie.
.
It's more dancing and bars and music and numbness, then.
Yao pulls his hair and what he and Vash have is the closest thing to hate-sex, but it doesn't quite reach and he gives Eduard a blowjob in a club's bathroom and they both don't make any noise, Jakob sits down and has breakfast with him after – they talk about skydiving and adrenaline and brothers, even though Francis doesn't have any. He and Gilbert and Antonio get drunk and end up naked and in jail and covered in something that he doesn't want to think about. Aisling is Arthur's cousin and they have the same green eyes, only she has red hair and kisses soft and sweet and he almost kisses Lovino outside of his school one day but then he thinks about Antonio and thinks that he might still hold some things sacred so he stops.
.
He's drunk and his hand hovers over five on his speed dial. It's Arthur. He remembers, it's in the center and it's easier to press.
He ends up clicking six and calling Mathieu.
"Francis?" He says, and his voice sounds fuzzy from sleep. Francis checks the clock on the wall. He's in someone else's apartment. She has a dark ponytail and she's passed out on lime green pillows now. He'll leave soon, because that's how these things work.
"You know how I'm on that downward spiral thing?" He says, and there's a shifting sort of noise on the other side, and a click, like he's turning on a lamp.
"You mean you sleeping with way too many people and probably contracting sexual diseases –"
"I always use condoms."
"Yes. I know about your downward spiral."
Francis thinks about asking him how he knows if he's hit rock bottom, because he thinks he might be close. Only Mathieu is good and the closest he's ever been to this is smoking too much pot with Lars, so maybe he should ask Gilbert or something.
"I think I'm going to go take a walk." He says, and Mathieu splutters, but Francis ignores him and hangs up.
He kisses the girl on the beds temple and leaves.
.
He remembers how he met Arthur when it was snowing and he'd laughed at his eyebrows and mocked his studying habits and told him his accent was tragically idiot and then questioned if he'd ever been laid. And how his eyes had glowed green and he'd punched Francis down into the snow and Francis had grabbed his jacket and pulled him down with and Arthur had kissed him. He wasn't even sure why.
.
"Frog." Arthur greets him when they see each other on the street and Francis has got his arm around a girl – her hair is in braids and she wears glasses but he can't remember her name. Arthur is alone, but he's glowing with something.
"Arthur." He says back, without even some stupid nickname.
His heart is beating so fast it hurts, but he doesn't show it.
"Good to see you're doing well." And Arthur is inclining his head to the girl with the glasses whose name he can't recall, if he ever even knew it.
He can't actually think of anything else to say, so he pushes Arthur into a bush and Arthur grabs his jacket and tugs him down with him.
Arthur doesn't kiss him. Not this time.
.
The next morning he wakes up in a stranger's apartment and throws up for ten minutes into someone else's toilet.
This, he thinks, might be rock bottom.
.
Francis ends up at Gil's apartment.
"I think I'm in a downward spiral." He says, mostly because Gil will understand.
"Knew that already, bro. You slept with Ludwig." And he snickers and Francis, being the better person, does not bring up that Gilbert slept with Lovino and Feliciano's grandfather after Elizaveta married Roderich. He also doesn't say that Ludwig is actually really fucking attractive, especially when he's barking orders in that drill sergeant voice of his.
"I think I'm at the end of my downward spiral."
Because –
He thinks about a string of people – and he can only recall the name of about half of them and none of them kissed him in the middle of a crowded street until he was begging for more and none of them had fiery emerald eyes and none of them read classics and knit while Francis painted or sketched and none of them stayed longer than a week.
He thinks about how he loves-loved-will-love Arthur for something like the rest of his life, and how Arthur glows when he's with Alfred.
He thinks about that girl, forever ago, with the gleaming hair and the sharp eyes and sacrifices.
Gilbert nods – his brother in things like lost loves and good alcohol and going to extremes and downward spirals.
"Nowhere to go but up, then."
.
basically this song is my head and the songs at least i'm not as sad as i used to be (fun.) and blank page (jesse thomas). go listen.
also i started using the french-matthew thing like once and then i couldn't stop, so sorry if that like extremely bothers you because it kind of extremely bothers me, but i'm dealing with it.
please don't favorite without reviewing.