Chapter 2: A Party Is Attended
or,
In Which Dancing Occurs and Lying Is Futile
Arthur does not know why he lets Amelia drag him to the party (no pun intended).
He does not know why he is there, awkwardly in a T-shirt and jeans, while Amelia is dressed as some sort of biker chick and Ivan is her … emo arm-candy thing. How Amelia managed to convince Ivan to wear so much makeup, Arthur doesn't know and definitely doesn't want to know.
He does not know why he knows half the people there and they keep coming up to him and saying, "Hey, Arthur, are you joining the club?"
He spends most of his time over by the drinks table, nursing a cup of fruit punch. Sometimes Toris joins him and they stand in companionable, semi-gloomy silence.
"I'm never sure how to dress for these kinds of parties," Toris confesses quietly, in a lull between songs.
"Amelia tried. I wouldn't let her," says Arthur stiffly.
(Sometimes Arthur feels like he's forty years old and should be wearing argyle sweaters and muttering about young whippersnappers. Or maybe like he's almost two thousand years old. He's not entirely sure.)
Toris quirks a small smile. "One of these days Feliks is going to convince me to wear a dress again. Not anytime soon, mind you, but someday. It's only a matter of time."
Again? Arthur wants to ask, because Toris really doesn't seem like the kind of bloke to crossdress, even reluctantly; but Feliks dances up to them then, a glittery vision of pink, and laughingly tugs Toris onto the dance floor. Arthur watches them. It's all awkward flailing limbs – if his ballroom instructor back home had seen them, she would have died of apoplexy – but there is a certain, well, if not beauty then a certain rightness to it. They look comfortable with each other.
Bugger if he can tell whether they're friends or more than that. There's something about them that's so ambiguous he could almost choke.
It's while he's watching them that he sees it out of the corner of his eye.
It is perhaps the most glorious arse he has ever seen in his life, including that of Antonio Carriedo, which is saying something. He is wearing black leather pants that look painted on, and a tight purple button-down tucked in to show off a trim waist.
Arthur hasn't even seen the bloke's face, and he wants to shag him.
Except then the guy turns around, and Arthur really, really doesn't want to shag him anymore. Because it's goddamn Francis.
Since when has Francis owned a pair of leather pants?!
Francis turns, and like a magnet that stuffy Brit draws his eye.
Why that stuffy Brit draws his eye, he has no clue. Perhaps it is the fact that Arthur looks so laughably out of place. Honestly, a T-shirt and jeans? Not even a tight T-shirt and jeans to show off that lean body (that Francis saw, that one time Arthur came in from the shower with just a towel wrapped around his waist – he teased him endlessly about that pale freckled skin, which perhaps had been a mistake, because Arthur brings his bathrobe with him to the shower now) – just a sad, baggy outfit that honestly reminds Francis of his younger brother Matthew. It's a crime.
But apparently Arthur notices him, too, for Francis is gratified to see a bright embarrassed blush coloring Arthur's cheeks. And ears. And neck.
Francis continues to dance, pretending to ignore the slender figure darting out the door.
Charlotte grabs his hand, and despite being sweaty and disheveled (or maybe because of it), somehow manages to look seductive. Then again, Charlotte has a special talent for looking seductive. It must be the French blood in her. "Hey there, François. Dance with us?"
Whenever Charlotte refers to dancing, she means the horizontal kind. She's a girl after Francis' own heart.
Francis smirks. "It would be my pleasure."
Arthur is already awake by the time Francis arrives back at their dorm the next morning, making himself his usual breakfast of Earl Grey tea and charred toast with marmite. (Francis wonders vaguely if Arthur's taste buds had been permanently damaged by some traumatic injury as a child, or if he had simply developed a remarkable resistance to horrid-tasting food through his own cooking.)
"Where've you been?" he asks, not looking up from his toast.
"With Char and Eliza" Francis yawned, tossing his jacket over the back of the nearest chair— Arthur flinches visibly, neat freak that he is, but says nothing— and runs a hand through his long blonde hair. "Quite good at dancing, those two."
Arthur gives him a Look and opens his mouth to speak, but decides against it with a small shake of his head. Francis beams back charmingly, popping a slice of bread into the toaster.
"And what did you do last night?" the Frenchman asks in a voice of innocent curiosity, years of amateur theatre the only thing keeping the smirk from his face. He can't wait to hear this one.
"Nothing interesting." The shorter blonde shrugs noncommittally, though Francis fancies he can hear a note of wariness in Arthur's voice.
Francis heaves a sympathetic sigh as butters his toast, a wicked grin slowly replacing his mask of carefully calculated innocence. "Ah, that's too bad. Spending Friday night all alone is such a… drag, isn't it?"
Francis bursts into chortling laughter as Arthur drops his tea in shock, his face going from normal to white as a sheet to a shade of scarlet he'd only ever seen in cartoons in about forty seconds flat, and makes a run for it before Arthur can find something sharp and heavy to throw at him.
