Chapter 9

Words unspoken

That same night, Arthur could not sleep. Tea, his precious standby, was probably what had caused this, but he was too distracted with finishing his fifth cup of the hour to come to the realisation. It was stupid, really, for him to be so worked up, kept up, by thoughts of the one who was precisely adjacent to his own position, and could probably hear him as he mumbled. And why on earth did he of all people have to suffer them? It was more than clear he was just toying with him; what else could it be? He was probably shagging the vast majority of the University whenever Arthur wasn't looking, though surprisingly, that wasn't the astonishing thing about this. What had truly captured the Englishman was that the thought actually hurt him. His heart sunk at the very existence of what he should already know. It was concrete, it was certainly not going to go away anytime soon, so why was he so affected?

He rested his forehead on his knees after bringing them to his chest, mushing it against the two as though that would solve any of the problems at hand. Whoever had mentioned that time can help anything was an idiot; all it had done for Arthur was make things a whole lot worse. Even expressing emotion at all had become risky. Hell, it was a miracle he had kept up the 'get out of my face' act for this long. He was wavering, yes.

And he blamed the Frenchman entirely for it.

This was probably nothing, he reassured himself. He always had been a hopeless romanticist before bed. But even so… It was too much all at once. Every restricted emotion, every crudely brushed aside thought that even hinted anything like this came back to haunt him; and by god, it was awful. He needed to say these words sooner or later, the ones that gnawed at his insides, the ones that would hound him to the ends of the earth. However, he also needed a way to express them. Not with the intention to present them, but to get them all out of his system, to have everything in front of him, and let that be the end of that. Since he sincerely doubted he had miraculously become the epitome of suave in the space of a few seconds, conventional words weren't going to cut it. Everything had to be planned, no chance of messing up, no chance of acting the fool.

He had the motivation. He had a pen and paper. But still, the former would not produce what he wanted. It simply hovered. Reality wasn't like in those hideous American romantic comedies, and Arthur could not produce a masterpiece out of thin air, especially regarding feelings he should not have.

Nevertheless, he fought on, no longer keeping track of the amount of times he had to scratch out whole paragraphs he had been slaving over for hours, no longer caring about the sea of crumpled papers that surrounded his desk, or the fact that his eyelids felt remarkably heavy. It goes without saying that Arthur roughly deserved what came next as his head eventually planted against the oak of the table with a small thud.

Motivation and stationary could not save one from the inevitability of sleep.

The sun was shining, the birds were singing, but all Francis cared about at that precise moment was locating that dastardly grey hair that had been in his face upon waking. Well, that and the matter that he couldn't hear the typical sound effects from an ancient Doctor Who rerun emanating from the living room/kitchen, which could only mean one thing: Arthur had overslept.

As far as he had noticed, it was not raining fire, nor was the sun causing the combustion of humanity, which ruined his theory that the day the Englishman neglected the outline of his uniform morning would be when Armageddon came about.

End of the world or not, he couldn't help but wonder. Had he let anything slip last night? Was this Arthur's personal way of spiting him? This demanded reparation either way, so, as soon as Francis had sprung up to apologise for whatever it was that he had done, he was obviously not expecting to see the self-proclaimed gentleman face-down on his desk and surrounded by a minefield of papers. It looked like someone had set off a bomb in a library.

Picking his way through the mass, he was soon standing directly to the snoozing Englishman's right. It was funny to think that, after what had seemed like forever ago, Arthur looked exactly the same when he slept. Cheeks at their pudgiest, brow lightened in an expression that, for once, did not contain contempt, anyone would mistake him for an entirely different person.

There was another thing that caught his eye, however. There, underneath Arthur's left hand, was a piece of paper. Overturned, of course; whatever he had been working on, it was clearly something he wouldn't particularly fancy anyone else peeking at. He ever so casually pulled the sheet out from underneath the Briton's fingertips. It was his duty to know these sorts of things as a roommate, wasn't it? It wasn't as though he were committing any sort of punishable offence…

A thousand different options ran rampant – was it the outline for the super villain's lair that Alfred was absolutely convinced he possessed? Something for a girl at the University that could subsequently be held against him?

Francis sucked in some air, turned the sheet over…then proceeded to splutter out what little breath he had obtained.

Apparently your feelings weren't damaged enough already. Lemme change that for you. Or they could be perfectly fine and I just react badly to Arthur being so conflicted. Probably the latter.