Author's Note:
...
Has it really been two months? I'm exceedingly sorry for that, and I promise I'll be back on schedule from here on out. I sincerely thank you all for not giving up on me. Thank you to whoever left the anonymous message that reminded me and kicked my ass back into gear in writing this. Without that, it probably would have been a couple more weeks.
Anyway, here's the next installment. I'm not going to lie, the next few chapters are more of a lighter reprieve from the main storyline. Goodness knows we need that.
The next morning, Arthur awoke far earlier than he would have liked to gray skies and pouring rain. He'd hoped that the nice weather that had greeted them the day before would carry on throughout the week, but Francis assured him that the climate of Paris was just as finicky as that of London. "It's January, what did you expect?" he'd responded when Arthur voiced his dissatisfaction over breakfast.
When an hour passed with no indication that the rain was going to stop anytime soon, it became apparent that it wouldn't be possible to go sightseeing without being deterred by the less than desirable conditions. The rain was still pouring as hard as ever, sliding in sheets down the windowpanes with no signs of relenting. As much as Arthur found himself wanting to go out and explore this unknown city, he'd had his fill of rain during the winter months back in London and he was none too keen on the idea of traveling on foot during what was quickly becoming a storm.
As Arthur soon discovered, however, the alternative was no more desirable. Antonio and Emma both arrived at the door a few minutes apart from each other in response to Francis's call, but Francis left no time to chat. He immediately began working out a plan with the three of them relating to picking up the rest of his belongings.
He'd left some things with Antonio and Emma during his stay in London, but the rest of it needed to be picked up from a nearby storage unit. Not long afterwards, Francis and Antonio left in Antonio's tiny car to pick them up, and Arthur was left with Emma to transfer things from the other rooms in the building.
The work didn't take very long to complete since there wasn't much to move from the other two rooms to Francis's, and Arthur found himself alone with Emma as they waited for the other two to return. She was constantly smiling, but that didn't make the heavy silence that hung in the air any less stifling. Every few minutes there would be a slight interjection into the dense atmosphere: an unintelligible hand gesture, the sound of quiet static coming from a weak channel signal on the newly set-up television, and plenty of uncomfortable mumbling on Arthur's part in his half-hearted attempts to break the tension.
All he could do was sip his tea, listen to the false studio laughter coming from the television, and wait for Francis to return.
It wasn't long until he did. And when he finally arrived with Antonio and at least five additional boxes in tow, Arthur found himself longing for the calmness of the television's static. They were put to work at once, sorting through boxes of books, clothes, appliances, and shoeboxes full of assorted trifles. Arthur couldn't even begin to imagine why Francis had kept some of the seemingly worthless trinkets. When he held up a tiny pewter cat figurine, asked Francis why he had it, and got "I have no idea" as an answer, he realized that he wasn't the only one who was in the dark. Francis didn't know where some of these things had come from either.
The sorted piles across the apartment grew larger as they made their way through the storage unit belongings and the appliances they had brought down from Antonio and Emma's rooms. For hours they worked, the relentless rain never ceasing in its assault on the windows as the four of them continued their careful organization. The boxes were finally emptied after hours of effort, and if Arthur ignored the pile of unsorted appliances threatening to spill off of the kitchen table, he could pretend that they were nearly finished with the entire project.
He couldn't imagine that Francis would let him go to sleep that night until everything was in its rightful place, but he tried not to think about it too much as the four of them made their way to a local café for a break.
Arthur didn't expect much from the excursion. He'd only spoken a few sentences all morning, just talking when he had to ask Francis which pile to sort something into. The other three had been complete chatterboxes, talking and laughing and making a game of tossing things at each other from across the room. Arthur had tuned out the chatter to the best of his ability. After a while of being surrounded by incessant French, he'd learned to more or less ignore it. He mentally scolded himself for feeling left out; even if he did understand what they were saying, it was doubtful that he would actually join in on the conversation. Besides, he figured that one of them would call him over if he was wanted for anything.
Arthur sipped his coffee and gazed out the window of the little shop as the other three conversed across the table. Earlier in the day it had seemed that a storm was on its way, but the evening's downpour had subsided to a steady drizzle, and the sky had lost its darkly ominous color.
Francis nudged Arthur's shoulder after nearly half an hour of unintelligible conversation. "I didn't know you were capable of going such a long time without saying something brash," he said. "Are you feeling alright?"
"Fine," Arthur responded stonily, not looking up from the table where he had been attempting to balance a salt shaker on its corner for the past five minutes.
"Really, now."
Arthur let the salt shaker fall to the table after yet another unsuccessful attempt. "Honestly, if I wanted to be included in whatever conversation you're enjoying right now, I'd need a translation dictionary." He picked up the salt shaker once more and held it on its edge in another half-hearted attempt to balance it. "It's hardly worth it."
"Well if you want to sit around and feel left out like a moping child, then–"
"I don't feel left out," Arthur said sharply, only realizing afterwards that he'd said it far too loud to be considered appropriate for the surrounding environment. "Besides," he said, lowering his voice in response to the disgruntled glances being cast towards their table by other patrons, "I don't want to talk to your friends, and I doubt they want to talk to me."
Francis opened his mouth to say something but seemed to decide against it. Without giving him any sort of response at all, he turned away from Arthur to speak once more with the other two.
Arthur spun the salt shaker absently on its side in small circles, having given up on trying to make it stand on its side. He watched as granules fell from the top and created a perfect circle around the container. It wasn't something that he would have chosen to spend his time doing but it was much more entertaining than focusing on being ignored would be.
He knew that he shouldn't have been so bitter about the whole thing. Francis hadn't seen his friends in over six months, of course, and it was obvious that they had missed him. Antonio and Emma were hanging onto his every word. It felt almost private, and Arthur debated excusing himself and taking a walk to give them more time together without him. Arthur knew that they were just putting up with him because he was Francis's guest, but even going out for coffee with the three of them made him feel like he was impeding on their hospitality.
"Arthur?" came a voice from across the table.
Arthur looked up from his salt circle to meet Emma's eyes. She glanced over at Francis and relayed a sentence or two to him.
Francis smiled back at her before turning back to Arthur. "She says that you're not interrupting anything, and that she wishes that there was an easier way to talk with you."
"Why does she say that?"
Francis tipped the salt shaker back into its upright position and brushed the circle of salt off of the tabletop. "I told them what you said a little while ago. For the record, Antonio agrees with her."
Arthur clenched his fists beneath the table. If he was looking for inclusion, this would most likely be the closest that he would get to it. But Francis deserved better; after all, this was only his second day back in Paris with his friends that he hadn't seen in so long. Even if Antonio and Emma were alright with Arthur tagging along, it wasn't fair for Francis to have to take on the responsibility of serving as a liaison between them when he should be focusing on enjoying his time at home.
Besides, Arthur would feel far less lonely if he was off by himself rather than in a group of people that made him into a third wheel without even trying, whether it was on purpose or by accident.
"If you're offering pity, I don't want it," Arthur said, keeping his voice quiet and even. "I can take care of myself." He stood and brushed the remaining salt off of his jacket. "I'm going back to the apartment. I'll stay out of the way for a while, so don't worry." He tried to remind himself that it wouldn't be any loss to them. They'd be better off without him anyway.
Arthur was hardly out the door when he felt the hand clasp around his. He stopped, ready to argue, but the grip was relinquished almost as quickly as it came. "If that's how you're going to be then there's no point in stopping you," came Francis's voice from behind him. "I'll be back in an hour or so. Will that give you enough time to stop your child-act?"
Arthur gritted his teeth, clenching his fist around the cold piece of metal that Francis had passed over to him. He wanted to turn and shout something at him, but forced himself to refrain from looking back as he walked away from the café.
It wasn't until he rounded the corner and was out of sight of the café's doorway that he looked down to examine the metal object in his palm. The flat edge of the silver apartment key reflected what little light it could from the overcast sky, darkening as Arthur passed under overhangs in an attempt to keep out of the rain. Of course he would have needed the key. It wasn't like Francis had given him an extra or anything. They'd expected to more or less stick together during Arthur's week in the city so it had hardly seemed necessary. Funny how that turned out.
The room was just as they had left it with piles strewn across every surface. It looked to Arthur that it would be too much work to move the piles from the bed, so he cleared a little place on the kitchen counter where he could sit and look out the window. The sky was beginning to darken once again, this time with the approaching night rather than clouds as lights clicked on all throughout the city. Visibility was low through the continuous drizzle, and the undersides of the heavy clouds were lit orange by the numerous lights below. How had it gotten so late already?
Arthur sighed, leaning against a cupboard and closing his eyes as he thought about what happened at the café. He'd been bored, for one. There was only so much entertainment to be gained from spinning a salt shaker. He kept telling himself that he was fine with not being included since that would just result in extra work for everyone involved, but it was hard to sit silently at a table with three other people who were chatting happily for hours on end as they went on blissfully in their unassuming safety bubble of each other's company.
That's what it was. At the café earlier, there had been that constant feeling of intrusion. As if he wasn't supposed to be there, or like he was seeing something that he shouldn't be. It was too much to ask to be included, especially when these three had been friends for so long and had been separated until recently.
And they may have been separated for longer, Arthur reminded himself. Indefinitely, really, when he thought back to Francis's previous situation. Spending time with those two probably meant more to him than Arthur realized. Had Francis told them about any of it? About why he was home to stay now in the first place? How the reason that he and Arthur were friends now was because Francis didn't have it in him to keep himself alive mere weeks before? Of course he hadn't told them. They wouldn't be chatting so happily together if they knew. That was probably the reason that Francis had stayed quiet. He didn't want anything to intrude upon his time with the friends he never expected to see again.
That thought alone was enough to replace Arthur's bitterness with guilt.
A little voice in the back of his head reminded him that Francis had offered to include him. So had Antonio and Emma both, for that matter.
They had. But there was no way that their politeness wasn't two-faced. It always was. They wouldn't want to talk to him anyway. They had Francis and he was enough. Arthur knew that he himself was dull as a rock. He lived a quiet life and hardly bothered anyone for anything as much as he could help it. Since he'd never made any attempt to speak with anyone aside from the Vargas brothers and Gil from Germany until Francis came along, he figured that he had dug his own grave in this matter.
He rested his head against the cabinet and turned his gaze up to the cracked ceiling. He knew that he'd done the right thing in excusing himself, but something felt off.
Francis was sure to be upset with him upon return. Maybe he should make an effort to remedy that, or at least to soften the inevitable blow.
He slid off the counter and to his feet, stretching as he made his way around the heaps on the floor. There was one pile in particular that looked simple to start with; it was full of clean clothes waiting to be folded and sorted into the chest of drawers, and it seemed to be an easy enough task. Arthur didn't necessarily want to start with the sorting of the numerous belongings yet, but procrastination would get them nowhere. It made sense to start sooner rather than later since they were going to have to work on it eventually, and he felt strange enough about earlier that he wanted to try and do something to fix it, and this was the only thing that he could think of that would help.
Really, he should work on thinking things through before he carried them out. He usually planned carefully for everything, but he'd only been thinking about his own boredom and how much he was impeding on Francis's evening at the time. And now he was stuck here, too stubborn to turn back, but regretting his decision to storm out like a child having a tantrum instead of sitting quietly and not making any trouble.
Francis had said that he wouldn't be back for nearly an hour, but Arthur had only been folding clothes and sorting them into drawers for ten minutes before he heard the door to the apartment click open.
Arthur only paused for a moment, but didn't turn around. "You're back early," he said as he folded up a long-sleeved shirt and tossed it into the drawer.
It was a few moments before he received an answer. "We ran out of things to talk about," came Francis's voice.
Arthur couldn't tell from his voice what he was thinking. There wasn't any anger there, that was for sure. Arthur felt himself relax a little at that. Normally, he wouldn't worry too much about having someone be cross with him. But when there was the chance that Francis was upset, Arthur couldn't push it from his mind.
"What are you doing?" asked Francis. Yes, his voice was devoid of anger, but the unnatural curtness of his sentences was worrying.
"I thought I'd get started with the cleaning," he muttered. "Thought it would be good to get a head start before you got back. I didn't know you'd be here so early."
There was a lull in the conversation as Francis leaned his bag against the table and perused the piles. "Thanks for that." He joined Arthur beside the bed and picked up a shirt. "It looks like we should be finished before it gets too late." He tossed it back on the pile, seeming to change his mind, and backtracked towards the table.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes as Francis filled his arms with books and hauled them over to the nearby bookcase. Two shelves were completely filled before Francis spoke once more.
"What was that all about?"
Arthur looked up. Francis's expression had hardly changed at all; he didn't look over at him, instead continuing to sort the books onto the shelves in a seemingly-indefinite order. "I already told you, I'm done intruding," Arthur said, not bothering anymore to keep his voice at a hearable level.
"And I already told you that it's not a problem."
Arthur flung a shirt at the dresser with more force than was necessary. "That's not fair, though." Although he told himself that he was saying this for Francis's benefit, a part of him recognized his true intention. "You deserve to spend as much time with them as you want. I'd only get in the way, what with the whole language barrier thing." Arthur felt his face begin to heat and turned away from Francis to hide his likely pink cheeks, trying to shut out the selfish part of him that wanted Francis to assure him that he was wanted. This was a horrible time to act on these feelings of loneliness and he knew that.
He turned his head slightly to gaze over to where Francis stood, and was startled to see that his blank stare was replaced with a look of stony displeasure. "You really are like a little kid, Arthur," he muttered. He'd run out of books to sort but made no indication that he was going to get more, instead staring into the empty shelves as if searching for an answer between the wooden planks. "For the last time, those two were sincere when they invited you to join us. And frankly, I'm astounded that you think so low of them that you'd believe that they're just pretending to care. Are those the kind of people you think they are?"
"That's not what I meant," Arthur replied, the accusations striking him like knives. He didn't dare look at Francis for fear of betraying the hurt that he knew was reflected in his eyes. "I'm just saying that there isn't a reason for me to be there, and I understand that. They–"
Arthur stopped as he felt a weight against him and staggered backwards a step. It took him a moment to gain his bearings and understand what the weight meant. He felt arms tightly grasped around his waist at the small of his back. By the time that Arthur comprehended the situation, Francis had begun to speak.
"Shut up, Arthur," he muttered into Arthur's shoulder.
Arthur yelped in surprise, attempting to take another step back with no avail. "Francis?" he half-shouted, reaching around to where Francis's arms were locked behind him. "What are you doing?!"
Francis didn't respond, just pulled away in the slightest to hold him in a weak, somewhat more distant embrace. Arthur didn't move, didn't breathe as he stared back at him with wide eyes. An unseen clock ticked in a nearby pile, and what must have been nearly twenty ticks sounded before Arthur felt his mind return once more. He didn't realize that his own arms were around Francis's shoulders until he pulled them back to his sides. He must have moved them unconsciously upon realization that the contact wasn't a threat.
"Francis," he muttered, averting his gaze. If his face had felt warm earlier, there was no telling how red it was now. "You can let go now. I'm not going anywhere."
Francis took a step back at that, then turned a moment later to fill his arms with another load of books. "Right," he said, making his way over to the bookcase as if nothing had happened. "Let's finish sorting out the rest of these before we go to sleep. The weather report said that tomorrow will be clear, and I don't want to spend the day indoors if it is."
Arthur didn't answer immediately. He still stood where he had been for the last few minutes, slightly stunned. "Alright," he said as he picked up another shirt from the bed. He paused for a moment, running his hands over the soft fabric as he gave himself another second to clear his mind.
A quick look around the room told him that even though they'd already started with the sorting, completing the task wouldn't be easy. With a sigh, he gazed down at the nearly-finished pile in front of him, wishing desperately for something to take his mind off of the boring task and dwelling on his own stupidity from earlier.
But of course, no such luck.
With a frown, he began to fold the shirt. He could only hope that this wouldn't take as long as it looked like it would.
Arthur grumbled as he pulled another blanket up to his chin. The room was freezing, and there was little that he could do about it other than pile more blankets onto the bed. Now he was nestled beneath at least four covers but the biting chill still found its way to his skin.
It was nearly midnight; the cleaning and organizing was completed, despite the fact that half of the piles had been arranged into the empty boxes and shoved unceremoniously under the bed. It seemed to please Francis though, so Arthur didn't argue about the lack of clear organization.
Arthur grabbed a pillow and shoved it over his head to block out the light of Francis's laptop. No matter how tired he was following a day of work after waking up too early, it would be impossible to sleep with the glaring white light emitted from the screen lighting up the walls of the room.
"Stop your fussing," came Francis's voice, although Arthur couldn't see him with the pillow blocking his view.
Arthur pulled the pillow away from his face with a scowl. "It's freezing," he clipped, making a show of pulling the blankets more tightly around him.
"Then put on a jacket." Francis hardly bothered looking away from the screen, instead continuing to type into whatever document he had been working on for the past ten minutes.
"But then I'll wake up in the middle of the night and be too warm," he mumbled. "And are you ever going to turn off your computer? Can it really not wait until morning?"
"It can't, actually," he said, his face pulling into a slight grimace.
Arthur sat up, leaning onto Francis's shoulder in an attempt to catch a glimpse of what he was writing. "What is it?" he asked, blinking against the full-on light of the screen.
"Emails to my ex-employers." He stopped typing and brought a hand up to his face, seeming to rest his eyes against the strain of the bright light. "I put in my two weeks' notice a while back but I ended up leaving before the time was up. I'm pretty familiar with the guy who runs the coffee shop, so he'll be alright with me leaving early. My employer at the hostel, though..." He trailed off. "That might be a little difficult to talk my way out of."
Arthur sank back against the pillows. "Why didn't you stay until the end of the two weeks?" he asked.
Francis positioned his hands over the keyboard once more. "I wasn't thinking clearly," he muttered as he began to type again. "As soon as I woke up at your house the other day, I borrowed Feliciano's laptop and booked my train ticket back to Paris." He paused, re-reading through what he had written before highlighting the last paragraph and deleting it altogether. "Didn't think I could handle any more time in London after... Well, after all of that." He was typing again, his keystrokes heavier than they had been just moments before. "I was sick and hungover and upset, and I made a dumb choice and couldn't afford to rebook the ticket." The paragraph that he had deleted was replaced with a few sparse lines, and Francis re-read them a few times before erasing those as well.
"You didn't seem hungover and upset," Arthur told him, rolling onto his side to face the window rather than having to shield his eyes from the light.
Francis let out a fervent chuckle as he continued to type. "After all these years, I've learned to hide it." The paragraph that he had just written was even more sparse than the one that he had just deleted, but he seemed satisfied. He hit the enter key a few times before typing his name at the bottom and hitting "send".
"You say 'all these years' like an old man," Arthur said, sure that his voice was muffled but not caring enough to move. He'd finally found a warm spot and didn't want to give it up for something as trivial as clarity. "How old are you, even? You never actually told me."
Francis powered down the laptop and closed it, throwing the room into darkness at last. "Twenty-two," he said, getting up to put away the computer.
If Arthur had said that he wasn't surprised, he would have been lying. He guessed that it made sense that Francis was older than him, but it was strange to think that the two of them weren't roughly even in their years. He tried to think of something to say but found himself pulling a blank; his brain decided on a simple "oh" to fill the silence.
Arthur heard the sound of a chair skidding against the floorboards, followed by a loud clattering and what sounded like a curse that he didn't understand. After a bit of mumbling, there came the sound of the rubber patches on the bottom of the computer meeting the polished boards of the table.
Francis stumbled in the darkness on the way back before falling heavily beside Arthur. "You sound disappointed," he noted, pulling the blankets over himself.
"I just assumed that you and I were about the same age," said Arthur, rolling onto his back to look up at the square of light from the space between the curtains on the window that illuminated a patch of the dark ceiling.
"Are we not?"
"I'm turning twenty in a few months," he muttered.
"Hm," responded Francis in a similar fashion. "Well, I didn't do anything immediately after high school other than get a job and abandon all other responsibility for four years. That might explain it."
"Right. I guess it does."
"Does that change anything?"
Arthur thought for a moment. Did it change anything? He didn't see why it would matter, to be honest. But something about this realization made things feel a little off. He didn't know how to describe it. "It doesn't change anything," he decided, turning over on his side to face away from Francis once more.
"That's good."
Silence.
Despite the fact that he'd been so tired just minutes before, Arthur couldn't feel more awake now. There were a multitude of thoughts running through his head but he could hardly dwell on one for more than a few seconds before another took its place.
Though he'd seemed so at ease earlier that day, it was clear that Francis's troubles weren't over. He obviously still had a lot on his mind. Arthur couldn't help but wonder if that was healthy.
The small gap between the curtains on the window that let a strip of light filter through the room now seemed as bright as the laptop screen had been. The building across the alley was alight with lamps that cast an orange glow into the street, and Arthur could see that the overcast sky was still tinged with the reflection of lights below. There wasn't much difference between London and Paris in that sense. The cities, much like their detached inhabitants, never seemed to sleep.
"Are you awake?" Arthur asked after a few minutes of quiet.
"I'm awake."
Arthur let silence fall over them once more before he spoke again. "I'm sure this whole employer business will turn out fine."
Quiet once more, other than the faint hints of their breathing and the occasional sound of a moped passing in the hushed street below.
"Thanks."
Arthur turned his gaze back to the window. For once, the silence was a peaceful, unassuming, unadulterated calm.
It was a nice change.
