[FIC] An Adagio with Small Cat Feet
Title: An Adagio with Small Cat Feet
Characters/Pairing: Francis, Arthur, FrUK
Rating: T+ / PG-13
Word Count: 8511
Summary: Francis is a writer, Arthur a critic; Francis is asexual, Arthur... confused.
Notes: Written for ikkjevaksen for what_the_fruk's October lovefest; this prompt.
i
He wakes up at six-thirty in the morning. It is instinctive. He has woken up at six-thirty in the morning every day since he was ten years old. Nearly twenty years of early mornings, despite the work, despite the exhaustion, despite the performances, despite the trysts.
Six-thirty a.m. He wakes up, and stares at the ceiling. He already knows it is useless to try to get up. His left leg feels dead, heavy. Cold. Even if he did manage to get out of bed, he has nothing to do.
He stares at the ceiling. It's painted white, but the sunrise tinges it first lavender, then pale pink, then orange, and finally gold. Sunlight creeps in through half-open blinds, working its way down the wall and across the floor.
The morning sits on his chest. It presses him down, forbids him from sitting up even when the sun has fully risen. It crouches, it kneads his flesh with its claws, it stares him down and seems to grow heavier as time goes on. He can only lie on his back, stare into space, and breathe.
At noon exactly, the morning disappears - or perhaps it simply springs off his chest and pads into the next room, to bide its time until tomorrow. He sits up.
ii
This isn't how he meant to be living his life. Two weeks ago, he was famous. Two weeks ago, he danced as effortlessly as now, he breathed. Two weeks ago his limbs responded to every command, his body was a work of art.
And then he fell.
(It wasn't his fault or maybe it was - he has completely forgotten the incident. He remembers dancing, reaching up, taking a jump. And then he remembers pain. And then he remembers the hospital, two days later. He knows from Natalya that he landed wrong, that his foot had buckled underneath him, that he had fallen to the ground and, when he did not get up, they called the ambulance.)
Something strange had happened in his head, when he made that leap; the doctors say he was already unconscious when he landed. They said it had been a minor seizure, maybe, but they weren't sure.
He didn't care about that.
They said he would never be able to dance again, even after all the small bones in his foot were healed. They had needed to perform surgery; his tendons would not stretch the same way; he would possibly reinjure himself; it was best to stay away from the stage.
The doctors saved his foot but Francis more than half believed that they had killed him.
iii
Arthur visits regularly, which, to Francis, is strange. After all, he and Arthur Kirkland are not and never have been friends. Acquaintances, surely, but Arthur is closer to Roderich (the pianist) and Elizaveta (the pianist's wife) than he is to Francis (the dancer). They have met at social functions. They share friends and have occasionally talked with each other. Francis remembers Arthur as a traditional Englishman, amusing and easy to anger. He is also a writer.
That's why he comes over, because the rest of them have day jobs (and perhaps they do not want to see Francis at all). He has nothing better to do.
Today, Francis has been up for two and a half hours. He showered, dressed, and then transferred himself to the armchair in his living room. Sometimes he reads magazines or books; sometimes he sits and stares out the window. Right now, he is pretending to be engrossed in a volume of Proust.
Arthur lets himself in. Someone gave him the key and Francis has not yet gotten around to taking it away from him. It's easier this way, when he doesn't have to answer the door himself.
"Good afternoon!" Arthur calls loudly.
Francis turns a page and does not reply, but Arthur knows where to find him anyway. "Hullo, Bonnefoy," he says, coming into the living room of the small flat. He still clings to his English politeness even in the face of their current, curiously intimate relationship. "Have you eaten yet, today?"
"No," Francis replies. And he doesn't intend to.
"Do you want me to make you lunch?" Arthur continues. He hangs up his coat on a hook near the door.
"No." Francis turns another page and wishes Arthur would just leave. He appreciates his gesture, certainly, even if the only reason he is here is probably because Elizaveta told him to visit. But whenever Arthur comes and sounds so cheerful, the weight of the entire morning comes back and presses down on Francis's shoulders.
But it's not a morning now; it's an entire day, and the added heat of the afternoon is almost suffocating. Even if he wanted to read Proust, he probably would not be able to concentrate. The words waver on the page as though he is looking at them through fogged glasses, underwater.
"Do you want anything?" Arthur asks. Francis senses that he is trying not to get exasperated; this is how these visits usually go.
"No," he replies. Each 'no' takes more and more effort to say. He would rather not say anything at all.
Arthur sighs. From the corner of his eye, Francis can see him standing awkwardly at the entryway to the living room, shuffling from foot to foot. Oh, he wants to help, but he cannot. His plight is pitiable. "Bonnefoy," Arthur begins.
Francis turns a page.
iv
There have been too many mornings lately. Francis feels choked even thinking of them and the way they pile up in the corners of his bedroom. They're everywhere. He cannot escape them. It seems he has been trapped in an inevitable cycle of morning-afternoon-night-morning, a cycle that never bothered him before because he had ways to escape it.
Ivan visits him twice, Marguerite and Marie once, and Natalya not at all. Francis does not blame them. While they are his friends, they are also dancers - Natalya, in fact, is the grand ballerina (and Francis's dance partner, former dance partner, ah, they were so beautiful together). They do not like seeing him, because he sits in his armchair like a prophecy and an apocalypse.
He was the best and now he sits and waits for the mornings to come again.
v
It takes two weeks for Arthur to lose his temper. Not that Francis has been keeping track.
"Have you eaten today?" Arthur asks as usual.
"No," Francis replies, as usual. He doesn't often eat. There's no reason to; he's not expending very many calories. He used to eat a lot, when he was dancing. He needed to stay fit.
Now, his muscle is disappearing. He doesn't want it to turn into fat. And there is barely anything in the refrigerator.
"Do you ever eat?" Arthur asks. His patience has been wearing thin all week. Francis can hear the pure exasperation in his voice.
"Sometimes," he says. He's not pretending to read today. He stares out the window. The clouds look interesting enough.
"Do you move?" Arthur continues. Francis sees him take two steps forward and then stop, his body straining against some invisible barrier. It's very like a dance, he thinks, and stops thinking about that.
Francis looks straight ahead. He does not want to have this conversation. "Sometimes," he says.
Arthur makes a strangled noise and clenches his fist. He takes another step forward. Francis imagines Arthur's patience is a balloon, and the ribbon is slipping out of his fingers. "Bonnefoy -"
The clouds look like a crown, perhaps. Francis imagines he can see the balloon of Arthur's patience, made of red rubber and rising slowly into the blue sky.
"Do you ever do anything but sit there? Do you even move? Why do you bother getting up out of bed? What are you -” Arthur stops, swallows his words, makes an inarticulate noise of anger. "What do you think we're trying to - why don't you -” He stomps his foot, makes another noise.
Francis does not react. He watches the red balloon float far away, until it's just a speck against the white of the clouds. A small jewel on the crown.
"Do you even hear me?" Arthur yells. Yes, Francis hears him. Perhaps even the neighbors can hear this. Francis wonders what they're thinking. "Does this even get through your thick skull? Why won't you just, can't you just - react?"
He's gotten closer to Francis throughout his monologue; now he's only a foot away with his hand raised up like he is going to slap Francis across the face. Francis is looking at him now, not out the window (the balloon has disappeared), but his expression is still neutral, his face blank.
He doesn't know what to say to Arthur. He doesn't know how to care. A part of him wishes Arthur would slap him; maybe then he would feel something. Maybe that would snap him out of this, whatever it is.
"Fine!" Arthur says finally, lowering his hand in a stiff, jerky motion. Ever the gentleman, he does not hit Francis. "Fine. I give up. Screw you, Bonnefoy, you spoiled, arrogant son of a bitch!"
He waits a moment for a reaction that does not come, and then turns and storms out of the apartment. The door slams. Francis sits.
Three hours later, he still doesn't know what to say.
vi
The next day Elizaveta comes to him. They have been friends since they met at a party; she was tipsy and Francis was flirtatious; he kissed her and she hit him over the head. Their relationship improved after that; she is probably Francis's closest friend outside the ballet company.
"Arthur called me last night," she says after letting herself in. Francis wonders whether he does not bother to lock the door or everyone just happens to have a spare key. "He talked about you."
Francis closes his book - a courtesy for Eliza. "Oh?" he asks. It is easier, with Elizaveta, to get words past the weight on his chest. She does not bring all the mornings with her.
"Francis..." she says, looking at him and sighing. Francis sees all the words on the tip of her tongue - you never go out, you need some fresh air, you're not smiling, you're taking too much medication, this isn't healthy, you can't live this way, why can't you get over it? - but then she glances away. "He's coming over as a favor, and I think you could use the company..." because you are too helpless to go out on your own.
"Ah," Francis says. He can see what she isn't saying. Maybe she's not even thinking it consciously, but it's there, the pity, the incomprehension, the impatience.
Elizaveta bites her lip. "Would you like to go shopping with me?" she asks. "I want to get you some things to fill up your refrigerator."
Francis glances outside. The clouds are high and cover the sky. "No thank you," he said. He doesn't know the last time he went outside.
"Any, any requests, then?" Elizaveta asks. He looks back at her; she is twisting her car keys in her hands. She doesn't know how to interact with him, Francis realizes. None of them do.
"Fresh bread, maybe," Francis said. He has not had that in a long time. "You can take my card. It's on the mail table." His arms seem stuck to the armrests of his chair; he makes a weak gesture with his hand toward the small table by the door.
"Right," Elizaveta says. Francis can see the words again, lining up in her brain and at the front of her mouth - this isn't healthy, you need to get outside, I can't keep doing this for you, do you understand - but again, she only looks away. "I'll be back in a few, then."
vii
And so it goes. Arthur does not come back for the entire week. Elizaveta visits sporadically. Francis rediscovers the taste of fresh bread with a small bit of butter and honey. He eats a slice for breakfast each morning. That's another whole meal.
He does not go outside. The mornings seem to gain weight and form in the corners. Instead of piling up like dead leaves, they are now more like living things, making a lair. Spiders in webs, foxes in dens. He imagines he can see glowing yellow eyes watching him when it is dark and he tries to sleep.
He feels trapped. But he isn't trapped; this is an exile of his own making. He does not reach out and contact anyone. Gradually, Natalya stops sending him updates of her progress. It makes him glad. He gets jealous. At least she can make progress.
Gradually, Ivan stops calling him to ask how he's doing. Francis only ever gave him monosyllabic replies, anyway.
Gradually, Elizaveta begins to leave him on his own for longer periods of time. The view from the window grows boring.
Francis thinks of ending his life.
viii
Death is an idle thought rather than an imperative. He thinks about going to sleep at night and never waking up, spending the rest of eternity in a comfortable darkness somewhere beyond the realm of consciousness or dreams.
He thinks of jumping from his window and flying one more time before he hits the pavement. Is it high enough to ensure he will not survive?
(To Francis, dancing was like flying. A leap, a split in the air - they all have fancy names but he does not want to remember those. Instead, he remembers the feeling of muscles coiling, the effort to work against gravity, and the few split seconds where the effort was successful. Flying is pure joy.)
In the evening, when he takes the medication the doctor prescribed (two pills for pain, one for an antibiotic), he wonders how many pills he would have to take so he doesn't have to wake up. Does he have enough?
But at the core he is purely lazy, and suicide simply remains a thought. And even when he thinks of death, he imagines the crunch as his body hits the ground, the feeling of breaking. He imagines stomach cramps from the pills, retching, vomiting.
When he cuts his bread he looks at the silver of the knife and the way it gleams differently with every direction he moves it.
Death is an idle thought, but a beautiful one.
ix
Arthur comes back the next week. He's not apologetic, but he takes in Francis's mail and checks the refrigerator to make sure there's enough food. Then he comes to Francis's chair, where Francis is sitting, flipping through a glossy fashion magazine.
"I think we should talk," he says.
Francis looks up. Arthur is the first person that has come to see him in three days. He has not talked in three days.
"Look, Bonnefoy - Francis," Arthur says, and Francis can almost feel the effort it takes for him to drop the distancing surname. He looks around and finally grabs a spindly chair from the corner, dragging it over to seat himself in front of Francis. "I'm, uh, well... is there anything you want to say?"
It's like he's been dropped into some strange, alien world, or at least that's how Francis feels. He does not know what to say or how to interact. "No," he says. When Arthur's brow furrows, he amends his statement: "I don't know."
"Ah, well." Arthur laces his hands together on his lap, stares at his fingers, stares out the window. "I was just wondering if there was anything... on your mind."
A flash of Francis's old, fiery nature returns and he thinks are you waiting for me to apologize? But it's gone as soon as he notices and instead he says, "No."
Arthur's lips thin. "All right. I just wanted to say, I mean..." He makes an effort to look Francis in the eye. "Look. Elizaveta is doing her best for you - we're all doing are best for you - but you're not responding." He glances away, twists his fingers in his lap, swallowed, meets Francis's eyes again. "You just sit there, and do you know how hard it is to keep coming back, keep trying, and get the same response? Get nothing?"
Francis is almost surprised. Someone - finally - someone is saying these things to him. Someone is telling him what they are really thinking; someone is giving him the truth that he knows but that no one says.
"You can't keep living like this, Bonne- Francis. You can't keep sitting here like you're some kind of, oh, I don't know, it's like you're dead!"
And as Arthur speaks, Francis feels, finally, Francis feels the first stirrings of anger. Of life. How dare he - how dare they speak like this to him.
"I don't know how long it's been since you've had a decent meal, since you've gone outside. You're just wallowing in this injury and Francis, it isn't even that bad, it isn't -"
"How dare you!" Francis snaps, surprising both Arthur and himself, the words that he has long been thinking now springing to his lips. "I am dead. This, this injury, you don't understand! I cannot dance." He leans forward and glared at Arthur. "Dancing is my life - was my life - and now it is gone, and you have the gall to tell me that I am making too much of a little injury." He snarls and clenches his fist, and then, without even thinking, stands up, balancing himself on his cast and his one good foot with an instinct born of years of training. "You do not know what it is to have your life taken away from you! I might as well be dead! I might as well kill myself! I might as well starve myself to death! There is nothing left for me."
When he paused to take a breath, he looks down at Arthur, who has not moved and is looking up at him with the strangest expression. If Francis didn't know better (if he didn't want to know better, anyway) he would think it was almost proud.
"Get out of my house," Francis snarls, but that is too much for his injured leg, and he has to fall back into his chair. "Get out," he adds, and covers his eyes with his hand because oh, this is absolutely humiliating. He has been broken and now Arthur has seen him this way, seen the extent of his hurt and his injury.
He hears rather than sees Arthur stand up. There's a moment when he doesn't hear anything at all, and then he feels the pressure of a hand on his shoulder. He barely has time to stiffen and pull away before it's gone. "I'm sorry, Francis," Arthur says.
Moments later, Francis hears his front door open, close, lock. Arthur is gone.
x
It's selfish, but Francis makes a catalog of everyone who would miss him if he died. He thinks Ivan would miss him, even though the big Russian man is undoubtedly the new danseur noble of the company. He thinks Natalya, Ivan's sister and the grand ballerina, will miss him as well.
Marguerite and Marie, of course, would miss him; they are like his little sisters.
The audiences might miss him for a few weeks, but Francis is sure that Ivan's grand style will win them over in no time, and so he does not put them on the list.
Elizaveta will miss him greatly, he imagines; Roderich, less so, but he will still mourn.
His old high school friends, Gilbert and Antonio, will miss him, even though he has not seen them in a few years, being so busy with ballet.
Gilbert's little brother Ludwig will probably not miss him, because he likes things orderly and predictable.
Arthur... Francis wonders if Arthur will miss him. Probably not, so that's eight people on the list.
Eight people will miss him.
xi
Elizaveta comes back the next day to take Francis to a doctor's appointment about which he had forgotten. When he stands up, she gives him a hug before handing him his crutches.
It's the first time in a long time that someone has touched him like that, and even though he does not want to, Francis leans into her embrace and closes his eyes. Here, he can pretend that he is safe and whole and loved again.
"Are you a mother yet?" Francis asks in the car. He was nervous stepping outside and feels much better sitting down under a roof, where he is protected from the open sky. "Because I think you would be a very good one."
Elizaveta is surprised at the question and also, Francis imagines, surprised that he is asking such questions in the first place. "No!" she says, and blushes.
"I think you should fix that," Francis replies, with a shadow of his old, insouciant smile. Her blush deepens.
At the doctor's office, they x-ray his foot. Doctor Honda is pleased by how it is healing. It has been a month since the injury and the corrective surgery. "Can you see those cracks, there, in the talus and the calcaneus?" he asks, pointing out whispery lines on the x-ray. "That's where your bones are healing."
Francis feels faintly sick. They give him more medication, though it's not as strong. The risk of infection is lower, now. They leave his cast on. Dr. Honda tells him to wiggle his toes; he doesn't try very hard.
Then Elizaveta takes the doctor aside. Francis listens and only catches bits of their murmured conversation: depression, an unhealthy outlook, understandable, psychiatrist.
"I don't need therapy," Francis says as the car pulls to a stop in front of his apartment. "I refuse to see a therapist."
"I never said you should," Elizaveta says, but she looks sad as she helps him out of the car and back into his flat.
xii
Alarmingly, the next time he comes over Arthur is carrying a large brown paper bag. "Baking supplies," he says in answer to Francis's look. "Ingredients." He grins. He looks windblown, like he hurried most of the way to Francis's house. Francis glances out the window - the trees are whipping back and forth as clouds scud across the sky. Maybe it will rain.
"We're going to cook something today," Arthur says. Francis blinks. So Arthur isn't mad at all then, it seems? "Or I can cook something and you can just sit there, either way. But I warn you, I've been told I'm a fairly awful cook."
"I suppose I'll find out for myself," Francis says, making no move to get up from his chair. Arthur shrugs and goes into the kitchen.
Francis has never been much good in the kitchen. Rather, he was much too busy to do anything in the kitchen other than heat up leftovers and put together salads. He is used to going out to eat, or to others preparing meals for him. Lately he has been subsisting off bread and whatever casseroles Elizaveta has put in his freezer. He doesn't think the kitchen is quite the place for him.
So he lets Arthur putter around, bang pots and pans together, hum some melody to himself - abstractly, Francis is glad that he let his mother give him a full kitchen set, even though it has never been used.
He doesn't watch Arthur, just listens to him, and looks out the window as the clouds gather together. He wonders if the air smells like rain. How long has it been since he has smelled rain?
Everything is dark and gray and Francis has almost dozed off when a fusillade of thoroughly British curses comes from the kitchen, along with a loud clattering noise. He twists around in his chair. "What is going on?"
"Nothing," Arthur says, "I mean, well..." There's a pause, and then, low and emphatic, "Bollocks."
Francis blinks, leans forward, and grabs his crutches, getting to his feet and slowly making his way to the kitchen. It's a mess - there's flour everywhere, the pots and pans are in a disarray, and the oven looks to be smoking. "What -?" he begins.
Arthur pulls a tray of burnt and blackened things from the oven, putting them on top of the stove where their vile smoke curls up towards the ceiling. "Quick!" he says breathlessly, "start fanning!" He shoves a dish towel at Francis, who takes it and, bemused, moves forward to wave it vaguely at the food. Well, former food, really.
"We don't want the smoke alarm to go off," Arthur says, grabbing another towel and fanning at the lumps more vigorously than Francis. "You'd get in trouble for that, I think."
"What happened?" Francis asks, looking around the disaster area that was once his kitchen.
Sheepish, Arthur looks away. "It was, well. I put the scones in the oven but got distracted by your cooking supplies - you know, you have a lot - and I forgot to set the timer. By the time I remembered, it was too late and I panicked and knocked over the flour on my way to the oven." He glances at Francis. "Told you I was a terrible cook."
Francis blinks, and then, still halfheartedly waving the dishcloth, staring at the inedible objects on the stove, watching Arthur bite his lip and blush, bursts into laughter that surprises both of them. He hasn't laughed in, oh, in a long time, since before the accident - and thinking of the accident makes him stop laughing. "I should have believed you," he says, his merriment now subdued. Still, he retains enough humor that he gives Arthur a brief smile (almost a smirk) and adds, "I'm never allowing you in my kitchen again."
xiii
They clean up. Together. Arthur gathers everything, scrapes the would-be scones into the trash, and piles the dishes in the sink. Francis rolls up his sleeves, stands and washes the dishes while Arthur wipes up the spilled flour. Francis dries the dishes, and Arthur puts them away.
When they finish, Francis feels better than he has in weeks, even though the running water has wrinkled his fingers.
Arthur is standing in the spotless kitchen, looking quite proud of himself in spite of the disaster he almost caused. There's a streak of white flour across his cheek. Francis points it out.
"You've got flour on your face."
"What?" Arthur asks and his hands go up, first to his nose, then to his forehead. "Where?"
Francis leans forward and brushes a thumb across Arthur's cheek, wiping it off. The contact is unexpected. Arthur stares at him, then; they stare at each other, Francis's hand on Arthur's face.
"There," Francis says, and moves his hand, turning away.
The rain has finally started and, instead of letting Arthur walk home in the deluge, Francis lets him scour the cupboards for tea and finally content himself with a mug of hot chocolate. They don't talk much. (Francis still does not know what to say, nothing comes to mind - he wonders at the easy conversationalist he was in a past life.)
They don't talk much, but it's enough.
xiv
The incident with the scones helps Francis, somehow. It takes a part of him that was twisted and puts it back together, like setting bones. He can almost feel the click when everything realigns.
Perhaps his foot wasn't the only thing that was broken in his fall. He wonders how long it will take for this interior fracture to heal. At least now, he imagines, it can heal.
Mornings are not quite so terrible anymore; they no longer have faces like foxes and eyes like demons. Instead, they peek at him with catlike snouts and ghostly gazes, and when they sit on his chest he almost wants to pet them.
When he wakes up at seven-thirty a.m., rather than six-thirty, he considers it a victory.
xv
He takes up cooking. It's a little surprising in retrospect; as all hobbies do, it seems to sneak up on him. He did not intend to do more than learn how to cook passably - perhaps it's a challenge against Arthur (surely Francis would not be that terrible), perhaps it is a symptom of his growing hunger. Leftovers and stale bread are no longer satisfying.
In his bookshelf he finds an old and tattered cookbook. Something that probably belonged to his mother, or maybe even his grandmother. It doesn't just have recipes; it also has information on the ingredients themselves, essays about what and what not to do with eggs, so on and so forth.
After much skimming, and a bit of deliberation, he chooses chocolate chip cookies. The recipe seems fairly easy, the cookies are generally liked, and if he ruins them, he will not ruin his dinner plans. He hands the list to Elizaveta when she comes to visit - flour, cane sugar, brown sugar, butter, eggs, shortening, chocolate chips, pecans. She's a bit surprised, but she seems happy too, and an hour later she comes back with the groceries.
The cookies turn out well. More than well, in fact; they're delicious. He makes up a plate of them for Arthur and savors the surprised look on his face when he takes a bite. So there, he thinks.
That's where it starts.
xvi
His cast is taken off sometime between the macarons and the coq au vin. Elizaveta picks him up, and he offers her a cookie.
"These are good, Francis!" she tells him after chewing and swallowing. Francis smiles. "I'm... I'm so glad," Elizaveta continues, but then she's getting his coat and he's getting his crutches and she never finishes her sentence.
Francis can imagine, probably, what she was going to say. I'm so glad you're moving on. I'm so glad you've found a hobby. So glad.
Doctor Honda, too, is pleased to see him. "You are healing very well," he says, "and I know we have discussed physical therapy before, but -"
Francis shakes his head. "I don't want it." He will be stubborn. A physical therapist certainly isn't as bad as a psychiatrist, but he does not want people to try to save him from his pain or lessen the impact of his injury. It took his life away, and Francis refuses to forget that.
"But," Honda continues, demure as usual, "I feel I will not recommend it, if you do these exercises." He hands Francis a sheet full of diagrammed stretches. "Keep these up. Next time you visit, if your muscle tone has not improved, you will begin therapy."
Francis looks at the sheet. "I can do that," he says, and Doctor Honda nods.
xvii
They saw off the cast, and it falls to either side of Francis's foot like two halves of a heart. His foot, the weight of the cast gone, floats up several inches like a ghost out of still water. It is white and he can see the veins, green and purple lines worming their way up to his ankle. When he compares his feet, the injured one is smaller, weaker. Atrophied.
There is a purple scar, hardly more than a dot, on the bottom of his foot. "That is where we made the incision," Doctor Honda tells him helpfully. "Wiggle your toes for me please."
Francis wiggles his toes.
xviii
He leaves the hospital with a cane - an impersonal object made of hollow aluminum. It makes him feel geriatric. He asks Eliza to make a brief stop before she drops him off at his apartment, and when he comes home, his new cane is thick cherry wood with a finished derby handle.
It makes a satisfying thunk on the ground as he walks, and Francis finds himself leaning on it a great deal more than he likes. But the thing is a good deal better than crutches.
When Arthur comes by, Francis is gratified to see his surprise. "Your cast is off," he says, and looks at Francis's feet, currently ensconced in light blue bedroom slippers.
"Yes," Francis says and picks up his new cane, standing and limping to the kitchen, where they spend most of their time. "Now I simply look old, not injured."
He is grateful when Arthur laughs.
xvix
"So what do you write?" Francis asks Arthur as they are sitting at the table, eating quick sandwiches made from fresh bread Francis baked and then heated on a skillet - a croque monsieur for both of them, hot and fresh with bechamel sauce.
Arthur looks up, almost surprised, and swallows. "Well I mean," he says, clearly groping for words, "nothing important, nothing special, I'm not," he laughs, "not a published novelist or anything..."
"I have never asked you before," Francis says. It still amazes him, how easily words come. How he no longer has to talk past a weight on his chest or an obstruction in his throat. How it takes a long time to think, and even longer to construct sentences, but once he does, the words float up effortlessly to his tongue. "You are a writer, are you not?"
Now Arthur is blushing. Francis wonders why he is so uncomfortable - and then he remembers his early days as a dancer, when each dance move was something precious. He would not even dance for his mother, at first; it was not a performance but rather a communion between his mind and his body.
"Surely you must write something," Francis adds, his tone almost teasing. "Otherwise, how could you afford to spend time with me?" Self-deprecating humor is almost all he has left, now.
"I write," Arthur says and laughs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Fine, don't laugh, I write poetry."
That is surprising. It is hard for Francis to imagine poetry coming from as prosaic a hand as Arthur's. He has always been the steady, pragmatic Englishman, who takes no nonsense and is as quick with his temper as he is with his God Save the Queen. "Poetry," Francis says.
"Don't laugh!" Arthur repeats, and Francis doesn't; he manages to keep a straight face even in spite of Arthur's blustering protestations. "It's, I mean... it's what I do." He looks away.
Francis has had some - more than some- experience in doing (and losing) what you love. "I believe you," he says. "Do you have books? Published?"
Arthur has refused to meet his eyes for the duration of this conversation, and he is still staring down at the table, at his half-eaten sandwich. "I, no, I..." He frowns, looks perplexed. "What I should have told you is, I'm a freelance writer. I usually do articles or columns for various magazines. Essays. Things. The poetry, that's... private."
And as he speaks his voice dwindles down into something that is almost - but not quite - quiet enough to be a whisper. Francis leans forward, fascinated by the sudden change he sees in Arthur. But it isn't a change. It is simply a different facet, a hidden layer, something Arthur covers up and turns away from the world. It's not vulnerability, not, at least, in Francis's eyes. To him (to his surprise), it is beauty.
"So you love poetry," Francis says. Arthur shrugs, nods. "Will you write me a poem?" he asks, half-smiling. "I want to see what you write."
"I..." Arthur begins and then blushes brightly, grumbling something and hiding back behind his shell of British stoicism. "No, no, I won't!"
But Francis is intrigued, and with this new feeling comes the stunning realization - he is almost, almost thankful for the circumstances that brought he and Arthur together.
xx
Francis doesn't mention Arthur's writing again, and Arthur doesn't bring it up himself. The poetry remains a secret between them, though Francis often finds himself thumbing through his old books, looking at poems - Donne, Shakespeare, Keats, Eliot - and wondering what Arthur's poems look like, what mysteries lie in notebooks and behind those green eyes.
Mornings are friendlier now, a little fluffier. They've gone from feral cats to strays, quick to bite but just as quick to accept a bowl of milk on the windowsill. Their disguise is so convincing, in fact, that Francis does leave a bowl of milk on the windowsill, until it curdles and begins to smell in the sun.
Arthur comes over almost every day now. Francis doesn't question why. He likes having someone he can talk to. He imagines Arthur does too, though of course neither of them will ever admit it.
xxi
A few weeks later, Natalya sends him tickets for her debut performance as the titular character in the ballet Giselle. It's a role she has wanted to play her entire life - it is a role for which nearly every ballerina longs - and Francis was so excited for her when she found out she was going to perform as Giselle for the upcoming season.
Of course, Francis was going to be dancing alongside her as Albrecht. Ivan has that role now, and Francis is sure he will do a marvelous job.
Regardless - there are two tickets for adjacent seats in a private box. Natalya is always doing her best for him. Though Francis is amused that she assumed anyone would want to accompany him, or that he would want to go with anyone else.
The next time Arthur comes over, he has barely hung up his coat and hat when Francis asks him, "Did you ever see me dance?"
Arthur turns halfway towards Francis, frowning slightly, and Francis can see the confusion in his eyes - is this a trick question? A confession? A breakdown? "No," he says after a pause. "I mean, on television, maybe, but not, not in performance, though I would have liked to, I mean," he says, stumbling over his own words with so many qualifications and hesitations that Francis cannot help but smile - slightly. A ghost of a grin.
"Good," he says. "Are you free tomorrow evening?"
"Yes," Arthur replies slowly, and the look in his eyes changes from confusion to suspicion. "Why?"
xxii
Arthur arrives at six-thirty sharp in his best evening wear, which is still shabby compared to Francis's crisply pressed, dove gray Yves Saint-Laurent suit and blue and silver silk tie. But it's good enough, Francis admits after he straightens Arthur's tie and adjusts his lapels.
"I've never been to a ballet before," Arthur comments at the bus stop. Neither of them have a car - they dress in style but travel in poverty.
"Then you have been missing out on one of the greatest art forms in the world," Francis replies.
But he's glad that this is Arthur's first ballet, and even happier that Arthur has never seen him perform. He's not sure why it is so necessary - this way, maybe, Arthur cannot tie him back to his past, cannot see what Francis is missing now, the way everyone else can.
"Isn't it strange?" Arthur remarks as he steps down from the bus, holding out a hand to assist Francis.
"Isn't what strange?" Francis asks. The bus has brought them straight to the front of the theater, for which Francis is glad, because the walk to the bus stop is long and his foot is aching from disuse.
Arthur holds open the door for him. "That we're friends," he says, and Francis laughs.
"We're friends?" he repeats, feigning incredulity, and Arthur kicks at him. Francis pretends to hit him with his cane and oh, he thinks, there goes his reputation.
xxiii
"The ballet is a love triangle," Francis says, leaning over in his seat to talk to Arthur. Natalya has outdone herself with the tickets, he thinks to himself; they have, unquestionably, some of the best seats in the house. "Between the beautiful maid Giselle, the huntsman Hilarion, and Count Albrecht."
Arthur is looking at the program. "It seems more like a fairytale," he says, his forehead crinkled in a slight frown. "What with all these ghosts..."
"Wilis," Francis corrects, tapping the correct term on Arthur's program.
"Wilis," Arthur says, making a face. "And it doesn't seem right to me that this Albrecht gets the girl, when Hilarion is truly in the right..."
"Ah," Francis says and holds up a finger to stop Arthur's speech, "but what does 'right' matter when one is in love?" With the murmur of the crowd and the warm golden lighting and the feel of his silk shirt against his skin, all his romantic notions are coming back to him. He feels enveloped in a golden haze, somehow ethereal, somehow precious, far removed from his usual fog of melancholy and depression.
Arthur, of course, snorts in disdain. "Whatever you say," he replies, and flips through the rest of the thick, glossy booklet. It's full of news regarding the upcoming season and the other ballets being performed. There is a glossy picture of a ballerina on the front.
"That is my dear friend Natalya," Francis says, pointing at her before Arthur can open the program again. "Natalya Braginski. She is this season's grand ballerina." He smiles slightly. "I have known her since I was sixteen years old."
Arthur looks at the slender figure in her white leotard and thin skirt. She is standing in attitude en pointe, one leg in the air, arms spread gracefully. Her silvery blond hair is caught up in a bun at the back of her neck, and the photograph highlights her profile, with her thin lips and arched nose. "She's... very pretty," he says hesitantly.
"More imposing than pretty, I should think," Francis corrects, and laughs. "But a hard worker, and very devoted. She will give an excellent performance tonight, I guarantee it."
xxiv
Natalya does indeed give an excellent performance. Francis watches the way Arthur's eyes glitter, reflecting the light of the stage, and tries to ignore the ache in his chest.
xxv
It is a quiet bus ride back. Arthur, for his part, seems content to remain quiet and think about the performance he just witnessed. Francis feels his old depression settling back in with a vengeance. The headlights of passing cars are eyes watching him in the darkness. Tomorrow morning is already slinking along rooftops, following the bus, tracking him down.
There is a weight in his chest so heavy he can barely breathe.
He does not regret attending Giselle. He is proud of Natalya and all she has accomplished, glad that her brother Ivan seems more than equal to taking the role of danseur noble. And yet this pride is tainted by a thick bitterness that reminds him he will never walk the dance floor again, inhale the scent of rosin, run across the boards and leap into the air like a bird in flight.
Never. Never.
His death sentence comes back to him with renewed force. He is a man awaiting execution - or, no, he is a man already executed, a head in a basket of severed heads, losing consciousness, losing awareness of pain.
Francis's mouth tightens. A gruesome metaphor, that. He reaches out instinctively, takes Arthur's hand, laces their fingers together and holds on tightly. Arthur looks surprised at first, but then his expression softens and he squeezes Francis's hand in return.
Perhaps he knows some of the thoughts running through Francis's head (though how could he?), because he leans across his seat and whispers, "It will be alright."
Oh, to have hope again, Francis thinks, and believe such pretty lies.
xxvi
Arthur gets off the bus with him and ends up following Francis into his flat, mostly because Francis still has his hand in a death grip. He even manages to unlock his door one-handed, as Arthur waits behind him. He's scared, Francis is; scared of the look on Arthur's face, whatever it might be (he doesn't want to see it), scared of the possibilities looming in front of them both like a towering blank canvas or an endless dark abyss.
Inside, Francis turns off a light and forces himself both to let go of Arthur's hand and to actually look at Arthur, meeting his eyes. He takes a breath, opens his mouth, and then shuts it again, shifting from foot to foot even though his weaker limb still twinges a little when he leans on it.
"Erm, thank you," Arthur says finally, after he's done massaging some circulation back into his hand. "For the ballet, you know, for inviting me, and... everything." He looks at Francis's face and then away - up, down, around the small hallway. He seems to be about as nervous as Francis is, or maybe that's a trick of the light.
"You're welcome," Francis says and takes a step backwards. But he catches himself at the last moment - catches himself forcefully and almost bodily, hands reaching out a short distance and catching empty air. "Arthur, I -"
He speaks at the same time Arthur says, "Francis -" and they both stop short, looking at each other; Francis wonders whether his own startled gaze is mirrored in Arthur's wide eyes and slightly opened mouth. "You go first," Arthur says finally.
Francis's lips tighten slightly. "I was just going to say, if you wouldn't mind, I mean, would you..." He looks away, turning his gaze to the floor and maybe the legs of the end table by the door. "I do not want to be alone tonight and..."
"I was just going to ask," Arthur says, clearly relieved; their eyes meet and Arthur gives him a swift smile. "I can kip on the couch, or..."
But Francis ends up putting Arthur in the guest room is dusty and filled with boxes (of sheet music, old books, trophies, certificates of the past) and garment bags (of costumes, delicate fabrics doomed to remain in storage forever now), but the bed is mostly clear. Francis brings out a new blanket and shakes it out before spreading it across the bed. He puts new pillowcases on the pillows, too.
"There you are," he says. He has not entered this room - not even opened the door - since his accident. And he could not have done it alone; the only reason he is touching the boxes, looking at all these tangible memories, is Arthur, standing awkwardly at the door and waiting for a place to sleep. "There should be an extra toothbrush in the bathroom drawer," Francis adds.
xxvii
It's dark out and Francis is thinking about everything and nothing, really. He stares at his ceiling, colored a dim bluish white in the glow from ambient light outside. Some days, he has trouble going to sleep, for whatever reason. Tonight, though, comes with a much more specific problem; he is hyperaware of Arthur sleeping soundly (he imagines) not ten feet away.
And with that comes the congruent awareness of the guest room, the trophy room, and Francis is suddenly struck with the image of Arthur laid out on a cold, marble sarcophagus, with all of Francis's ghosts standing over him like silent guards.
Francis pushes off his covers and stands, limping over (now he can walk certain distances without the help of crutches or his cane) to the door of the guest room, pushing it open. It isn't a tomb, just a room full of boxes, and the low light from the hall spills inside and colors Arthur's hair a rich, unnatural gold.
He stands there and thinks of the old proverb noting ventured, nothing gained.
Nothing ventured, and his feet feel glued to the rug in the hallway, even though he's already shifting to take the weight off his bad foot. Nothing gained and wonders how long it will take him to get to sleep if he just turns and goes back to bed right now.
"You're letting the light in, you know," Arthur says. The pile of blankets barely rustles.
xxviii
They end up in Francis's room, mostly because the atmosphere of the guest room gets too heavy after too long, with all the dust and old ghosts. "It's all of my things," he tells Arthur. "From ballet. Trophies, costumes..."
There is silence from Arthur and Francis uses the time to sit, to watch the stationary shadows in the hallway, to embrace the warm, solid feeling of a body beside him. It has been a while.
"I miss it," he says after several moments, glancing sidelong at Arthur (just a shape in the dark) and then back down at his lap and his clasped hands. "I don't know if I can live... without it, but I'm trying. I suppose, in a way, that's all we can do." He shrugs, which makes the mattress move a little underneath them.
"Francis, I," Arthur begins, then reaches out to touch his hand. Francis unclasps his own hands and laces his fingers with Arthur's. "I don't want you to feel this way," he says, the words coming out of his mouth in a rush. "I don't like it, but I think, I mean, I like you, and I'm glad I got to know you, even though you feel... like that."
It's funny that writers can be the most inarticulate people, without pens in their hands, Francis thinks, though Arthur is the first writer he's really known. And anyway, his fingers tighten around Arthur and he leans closer. "Thank you," he says softly, and then chuckles and adds, "I think," before the atmosphere gets too heavy.
And then there is another silence. Francis looks at Arthur, so close to him their shoulders are brushing; his green eyes are wide but shadowed in the dark. He swallows - thinks about endless universes of possibilities. Thinks about how certain things die and certain things start to grow, all at the same time.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," he says out loud, and as Arthur turns to look at him, curious, he leans in (moving with some sort of grace, some sort of finitude, like a transfer from position to position) and kisses him.
xxiv
Their intimacy is sudden and yet somehow inevitable; they fall together like gravity, like destiny, like every trite metaphor Francis has ever heard. It's funny that he can only describe these things in silly metaphors, but he is no writer. He is - he was - a dancer.
He thinks about movement, about sliding his hand up Arthur's chest, moving his thigh between Arthur's legs. He thinks about touch, he thinks about Arthur's eyes in the dark.
Francis is a dancer, but with Arthur, like this, he thinks about poetry.
xxx
When Francis wakes up, it's already eight thirty a.m. and the morning is curled up in the corner of the room, purring contentedly. It meets his eyes, blinks, flicks its ears, and licks a paw.
Francis smiles at it, rolls over, puts an arm around Arthur, and goes back to sleep.
Characters/Pairing: Francis, Arthur, FrUK
Rating: T+ / PG-13
Word Count: 8511
Summary: Francis is a writer, Arthur a critic; Francis is asexual, Arthur... confused.
Notes: Written for ikkjevaksen for what_the_fruk's October lovefest; this prompt.
i
He wakes up at six-thirty in the morning. It is instinctive. He has woken up at six-thirty in the morning every day since he was ten years old. Nearly twenty years of early mornings, despite the work, despite the exhaustion, despite the performances, despite the trysts.
Six-thirty a.m. He wakes up, and stares at the ceiling. He already knows it is useless to try to get up. His left leg feels dead, heavy. Cold. Even if he did manage to get out of bed, he has nothing to do.
He stares at the ceiling. It's painted white, but the sunrise tinges it first lavender, then pale pink, then orange, and finally gold. Sunlight creeps in through half-open blinds, working its way down the wall and across the floor.
The morning sits on his chest. It presses him down, forbids him from sitting up even when the sun has fully risen. It crouches, it kneads his flesh with its claws, it stares him down and seems to grow heavier as time goes on. He can only lie on his back, stare into space, and breathe.
At noon exactly, the morning disappears - or perhaps it simply springs off his chest and pads into the next room, to bide its time until tomorrow. He sits up.
ii
This isn't how he meant to be living his life. Two weeks ago, he was famous. Two weeks ago, he danced as effortlessly as now, he breathed. Two weeks ago his limbs responded to every command, his body was a work of art.
And then he fell.
(It wasn't his fault or maybe it was - he has completely forgotten the incident. He remembers dancing, reaching up, taking a jump. And then he remembers pain. And then he remembers the hospital, two days later. He knows from Natalya that he landed wrong, that his foot had buckled underneath him, that he had fallen to the ground and, when he did not get up, they called the ambulance.)
Something strange had happened in his head, when he made that leap; the doctors say he was already unconscious when he landed. They said it had been a minor seizure, maybe, but they weren't sure.
He didn't care about that.
They said he would never be able to dance again, even after all the small bones in his foot were healed. They had needed to perform surgery; his tendons would not stretch the same way; he would possibly reinjure himself; it was best to stay away from the stage.
The doctors saved his foot but Francis more than half believed that they had killed him.
iii
Arthur visits regularly, which, to Francis, is strange. After all, he and Arthur Kirkland are not and never have been friends. Acquaintances, surely, but Arthur is closer to Roderich (the pianist) and Elizaveta (the pianist's wife) than he is to Francis (the dancer). They have met at social functions. They share friends and have occasionally talked with each other. Francis remembers Arthur as a traditional Englishman, amusing and easy to anger. He is also a writer.
That's why he comes over, because the rest of them have day jobs (and perhaps they do not want to see Francis at all). He has nothing better to do.
Today, Francis has been up for two and a half hours. He showered, dressed, and then transferred himself to the armchair in his living room. Sometimes he reads magazines or books; sometimes he sits and stares out the window. Right now, he is pretending to be engrossed in a volume of Proust.
Arthur lets himself in. Someone gave him the key and Francis has not yet gotten around to taking it away from him. It's easier this way, when he doesn't have to answer the door himself.
"Good afternoon!" Arthur calls loudly.
Francis turns a page and does not reply, but Arthur knows where to find him anyway. "Hullo, Bonnefoy," he says, coming into the living room of the small flat. He still clings to his English politeness even in the face of their current, curiously intimate relationship. "Have you eaten yet, today?"
"No," Francis replies. And he doesn't intend to.
"Do you want me to make you lunch?" Arthur continues. He hangs up his coat on a hook near the door.
"No." Francis turns another page and wishes Arthur would just leave. He appreciates his gesture, certainly, even if the only reason he is here is probably because Elizaveta told him to visit. But whenever Arthur comes and sounds so cheerful, the weight of the entire morning comes back and presses down on Francis's shoulders.
But it's not a morning now; it's an entire day, and the added heat of the afternoon is almost suffocating. Even if he wanted to read Proust, he probably would not be able to concentrate. The words waver on the page as though he is looking at them through fogged glasses, underwater.
"Do you want anything?" Arthur asks. Francis senses that he is trying not to get exasperated; this is how these visits usually go.
"No," he replies. Each 'no' takes more and more effort to say. He would rather not say anything at all.
Arthur sighs. From the corner of his eye, Francis can see him standing awkwardly at the entryway to the living room, shuffling from foot to foot. Oh, he wants to help, but he cannot. His plight is pitiable. "Bonnefoy," Arthur begins.
Francis turns a page.
iv
There have been too many mornings lately. Francis feels choked even thinking of them and the way they pile up in the corners of his bedroom. They're everywhere. He cannot escape them. It seems he has been trapped in an inevitable cycle of morning-afternoon-night-morning, a cycle that never bothered him before because he had ways to escape it.
Ivan visits him twice, Marguerite and Marie once, and Natalya not at all. Francis does not blame them. While they are his friends, they are also dancers - Natalya, in fact, is the grand ballerina (and Francis's dance partner, former dance partner, ah, they were so beautiful together). They do not like seeing him, because he sits in his armchair like a prophecy and an apocalypse.
He was the best and now he sits and waits for the mornings to come again.
v
It takes two weeks for Arthur to lose his temper. Not that Francis has been keeping track.
"Have you eaten today?" Arthur asks as usual.
"No," Francis replies, as usual. He doesn't often eat. There's no reason to; he's not expending very many calories. He used to eat a lot, when he was dancing. He needed to stay fit.
Now, his muscle is disappearing. He doesn't want it to turn into fat. And there is barely anything in the refrigerator.
"Do you ever eat?" Arthur asks. His patience has been wearing thin all week. Francis can hear the pure exasperation in his voice.
"Sometimes," he says. He's not pretending to read today. He stares out the window. The clouds look interesting enough.
"Do you move?" Arthur continues. Francis sees him take two steps forward and then stop, his body straining against some invisible barrier. It's very like a dance, he thinks, and stops thinking about that.
Francis looks straight ahead. He does not want to have this conversation. "Sometimes," he says.
Arthur makes a strangled noise and clenches his fist. He takes another step forward. Francis imagines Arthur's patience is a balloon, and the ribbon is slipping out of his fingers. "Bonnefoy -"
The clouds look like a crown, perhaps. Francis imagines he can see the balloon of Arthur's patience, made of red rubber and rising slowly into the blue sky.
"Do you ever do anything but sit there? Do you even move? Why do you bother getting up out of bed? What are you -” Arthur stops, swallows his words, makes an inarticulate noise of anger. "What do you think we're trying to - why don't you -” He stomps his foot, makes another noise.
Francis does not react. He watches the red balloon float far away, until it's just a speck against the white of the clouds. A small jewel on the crown.
"Do you even hear me?" Arthur yells. Yes, Francis hears him. Perhaps even the neighbors can hear this. Francis wonders what they're thinking. "Does this even get through your thick skull? Why won't you just, can't you just - react?"
He's gotten closer to Francis throughout his monologue; now he's only a foot away with his hand raised up like he is going to slap Francis across the face. Francis is looking at him now, not out the window (the balloon has disappeared), but his expression is still neutral, his face blank.
He doesn't know what to say to Arthur. He doesn't know how to care. A part of him wishes Arthur would slap him; maybe then he would feel something. Maybe that would snap him out of this, whatever it is.
"Fine!" Arthur says finally, lowering his hand in a stiff, jerky motion. Ever the gentleman, he does not hit Francis. "Fine. I give up. Screw you, Bonnefoy, you spoiled, arrogant son of a bitch!"
He waits a moment for a reaction that does not come, and then turns and storms out of the apartment. The door slams. Francis sits.
Three hours later, he still doesn't know what to say.
vi
The next day Elizaveta comes to him. They have been friends since they met at a party; she was tipsy and Francis was flirtatious; he kissed her and she hit him over the head. Their relationship improved after that; she is probably Francis's closest friend outside the ballet company.
"Arthur called me last night," she says after letting herself in. Francis wonders whether he does not bother to lock the door or everyone just happens to have a spare key. "He talked about you."
Francis closes his book - a courtesy for Eliza. "Oh?" he asks. It is easier, with Elizaveta, to get words past the weight on his chest. She does not bring all the mornings with her.
"Francis..." she says, looking at him and sighing. Francis sees all the words on the tip of her tongue - you never go out, you need some fresh air, you're not smiling, you're taking too much medication, this isn't healthy, you can't live this way, why can't you get over it? - but then she glances away. "He's coming over as a favor, and I think you could use the company..." because you are too helpless to go out on your own.
"Ah," Francis says. He can see what she isn't saying. Maybe she's not even thinking it consciously, but it's there, the pity, the incomprehension, the impatience.
Elizaveta bites her lip. "Would you like to go shopping with me?" she asks. "I want to get you some things to fill up your refrigerator."
Francis glances outside. The clouds are high and cover the sky. "No thank you," he said. He doesn't know the last time he went outside.
"Any, any requests, then?" Elizaveta asks. He looks back at her; she is twisting her car keys in her hands. She doesn't know how to interact with him, Francis realizes. None of them do.
"Fresh bread, maybe," Francis said. He has not had that in a long time. "You can take my card. It's on the mail table." His arms seem stuck to the armrests of his chair; he makes a weak gesture with his hand toward the small table by the door.
"Right," Elizaveta says. Francis can see the words again, lining up in her brain and at the front of her mouth - this isn't healthy, you need to get outside, I can't keep doing this for you, do you understand - but again, she only looks away. "I'll be back in a few, then."
vii
And so it goes. Arthur does not come back for the entire week. Elizaveta visits sporadically. Francis rediscovers the taste of fresh bread with a small bit of butter and honey. He eats a slice for breakfast each morning. That's another whole meal.
He does not go outside. The mornings seem to gain weight and form in the corners. Instead of piling up like dead leaves, they are now more like living things, making a lair. Spiders in webs, foxes in dens. He imagines he can see glowing yellow eyes watching him when it is dark and he tries to sleep.
He feels trapped. But he isn't trapped; this is an exile of his own making. He does not reach out and contact anyone. Gradually, Natalya stops sending him updates of her progress. It makes him glad. He gets jealous. At least she can make progress.
Gradually, Ivan stops calling him to ask how he's doing. Francis only ever gave him monosyllabic replies, anyway.
Gradually, Elizaveta begins to leave him on his own for longer periods of time. The view from the window grows boring.
Francis thinks of ending his life.
viii
Death is an idle thought rather than an imperative. He thinks about going to sleep at night and never waking up, spending the rest of eternity in a comfortable darkness somewhere beyond the realm of consciousness or dreams.
He thinks of jumping from his window and flying one more time before he hits the pavement. Is it high enough to ensure he will not survive?
(To Francis, dancing was like flying. A leap, a split in the air - they all have fancy names but he does not want to remember those. Instead, he remembers the feeling of muscles coiling, the effort to work against gravity, and the few split seconds where the effort was successful. Flying is pure joy.)
In the evening, when he takes the medication the doctor prescribed (two pills for pain, one for an antibiotic), he wonders how many pills he would have to take so he doesn't have to wake up. Does he have enough?
But at the core he is purely lazy, and suicide simply remains a thought. And even when he thinks of death, he imagines the crunch as his body hits the ground, the feeling of breaking. He imagines stomach cramps from the pills, retching, vomiting.
When he cuts his bread he looks at the silver of the knife and the way it gleams differently with every direction he moves it.
Death is an idle thought, but a beautiful one.
ix
Arthur comes back the next week. He's not apologetic, but he takes in Francis's mail and checks the refrigerator to make sure there's enough food. Then he comes to Francis's chair, where Francis is sitting, flipping through a glossy fashion magazine.
"I think we should talk," he says.
Francis looks up. Arthur is the first person that has come to see him in three days. He has not talked in three days.
"Look, Bonnefoy - Francis," Arthur says, and Francis can almost feel the effort it takes for him to drop the distancing surname. He looks around and finally grabs a spindly chair from the corner, dragging it over to seat himself in front of Francis. "I'm, uh, well... is there anything you want to say?"
It's like he's been dropped into some strange, alien world, or at least that's how Francis feels. He does not know what to say or how to interact. "No," he says. When Arthur's brow furrows, he amends his statement: "I don't know."
"Ah, well." Arthur laces his hands together on his lap, stares at his fingers, stares out the window. "I was just wondering if there was anything... on your mind."
A flash of Francis's old, fiery nature returns and he thinks are you waiting for me to apologize? But it's gone as soon as he notices and instead he says, "No."
Arthur's lips thin. "All right. I just wanted to say, I mean..." He makes an effort to look Francis in the eye. "Look. Elizaveta is doing her best for you - we're all doing are best for you - but you're not responding." He glances away, twists his fingers in his lap, swallowed, meets Francis's eyes again. "You just sit there, and do you know how hard it is to keep coming back, keep trying, and get the same response? Get nothing?"
Francis is almost surprised. Someone - finally - someone is saying these things to him. Someone is telling him what they are really thinking; someone is giving him the truth that he knows but that no one says.
"You can't keep living like this, Bonne- Francis. You can't keep sitting here like you're some kind of, oh, I don't know, it's like you're dead!"
And as Arthur speaks, Francis feels, finally, Francis feels the first stirrings of anger. Of life. How dare he - how dare they speak like this to him.
"I don't know how long it's been since you've had a decent meal, since you've gone outside. You're just wallowing in this injury and Francis, it isn't even that bad, it isn't -"
"How dare you!" Francis snaps, surprising both Arthur and himself, the words that he has long been thinking now springing to his lips. "I am dead. This, this injury, you don't understand! I cannot dance." He leans forward and glared at Arthur. "Dancing is my life - was my life - and now it is gone, and you have the gall to tell me that I am making too much of a little injury." He snarls and clenches his fist, and then, without even thinking, stands up, balancing himself on his cast and his one good foot with an instinct born of years of training. "You do not know what it is to have your life taken away from you! I might as well be dead! I might as well kill myself! I might as well starve myself to death! There is nothing left for me."
When he paused to take a breath, he looks down at Arthur, who has not moved and is looking up at him with the strangest expression. If Francis didn't know better (if he didn't want to know better, anyway) he would think it was almost proud.
"Get out of my house," Francis snarls, but that is too much for his injured leg, and he has to fall back into his chair. "Get out," he adds, and covers his eyes with his hand because oh, this is absolutely humiliating. He has been broken and now Arthur has seen him this way, seen the extent of his hurt and his injury.
He hears rather than sees Arthur stand up. There's a moment when he doesn't hear anything at all, and then he feels the pressure of a hand on his shoulder. He barely has time to stiffen and pull away before it's gone. "I'm sorry, Francis," Arthur says.
Moments later, Francis hears his front door open, close, lock. Arthur is gone.
x
It's selfish, but Francis makes a catalog of everyone who would miss him if he died. He thinks Ivan would miss him, even though the big Russian man is undoubtedly the new danseur noble of the company. He thinks Natalya, Ivan's sister and the grand ballerina, will miss him as well.
Marguerite and Marie, of course, would miss him; they are like his little sisters.
The audiences might miss him for a few weeks, but Francis is sure that Ivan's grand style will win them over in no time, and so he does not put them on the list.
Elizaveta will miss him greatly, he imagines; Roderich, less so, but he will still mourn.
His old high school friends, Gilbert and Antonio, will miss him, even though he has not seen them in a few years, being so busy with ballet.
Gilbert's little brother Ludwig will probably not miss him, because he likes things orderly and predictable.
Arthur... Francis wonders if Arthur will miss him. Probably not, so that's eight people on the list.
Eight people will miss him.
xi
Elizaveta comes back the next day to take Francis to a doctor's appointment about which he had forgotten. When he stands up, she gives him a hug before handing him his crutches.
It's the first time in a long time that someone has touched him like that, and even though he does not want to, Francis leans into her embrace and closes his eyes. Here, he can pretend that he is safe and whole and loved again.
"Are you a mother yet?" Francis asks in the car. He was nervous stepping outside and feels much better sitting down under a roof, where he is protected from the open sky. "Because I think you would be a very good one."
Elizaveta is surprised at the question and also, Francis imagines, surprised that he is asking such questions in the first place. "No!" she says, and blushes.
"I think you should fix that," Francis replies, with a shadow of his old, insouciant smile. Her blush deepens.
At the doctor's office, they x-ray his foot. Doctor Honda is pleased by how it is healing. It has been a month since the injury and the corrective surgery. "Can you see those cracks, there, in the talus and the calcaneus?" he asks, pointing out whispery lines on the x-ray. "That's where your bones are healing."
Francis feels faintly sick. They give him more medication, though it's not as strong. The risk of infection is lower, now. They leave his cast on. Dr. Honda tells him to wiggle his toes; he doesn't try very hard.
Then Elizaveta takes the doctor aside. Francis listens and only catches bits of their murmured conversation: depression, an unhealthy outlook, understandable, psychiatrist.
"I don't need therapy," Francis says as the car pulls to a stop in front of his apartment. "I refuse to see a therapist."
"I never said you should," Elizaveta says, but she looks sad as she helps him out of the car and back into his flat.
xii
Alarmingly, the next time he comes over Arthur is carrying a large brown paper bag. "Baking supplies," he says in answer to Francis's look. "Ingredients." He grins. He looks windblown, like he hurried most of the way to Francis's house. Francis glances out the window - the trees are whipping back and forth as clouds scud across the sky. Maybe it will rain.
"We're going to cook something today," Arthur says. Francis blinks. So Arthur isn't mad at all then, it seems? "Or I can cook something and you can just sit there, either way. But I warn you, I've been told I'm a fairly awful cook."
"I suppose I'll find out for myself," Francis says, making no move to get up from his chair. Arthur shrugs and goes into the kitchen.
Francis has never been much good in the kitchen. Rather, he was much too busy to do anything in the kitchen other than heat up leftovers and put together salads. He is used to going out to eat, or to others preparing meals for him. Lately he has been subsisting off bread and whatever casseroles Elizaveta has put in his freezer. He doesn't think the kitchen is quite the place for him.
So he lets Arthur putter around, bang pots and pans together, hum some melody to himself - abstractly, Francis is glad that he let his mother give him a full kitchen set, even though it has never been used.
He doesn't watch Arthur, just listens to him, and looks out the window as the clouds gather together. He wonders if the air smells like rain. How long has it been since he has smelled rain?
Everything is dark and gray and Francis has almost dozed off when a fusillade of thoroughly British curses comes from the kitchen, along with a loud clattering noise. He twists around in his chair. "What is going on?"
"Nothing," Arthur says, "I mean, well..." There's a pause, and then, low and emphatic, "Bollocks."
Francis blinks, leans forward, and grabs his crutches, getting to his feet and slowly making his way to the kitchen. It's a mess - there's flour everywhere, the pots and pans are in a disarray, and the oven looks to be smoking. "What -?" he begins.
Arthur pulls a tray of burnt and blackened things from the oven, putting them on top of the stove where their vile smoke curls up towards the ceiling. "Quick!" he says breathlessly, "start fanning!" He shoves a dish towel at Francis, who takes it and, bemused, moves forward to wave it vaguely at the food. Well, former food, really.
"We don't want the smoke alarm to go off," Arthur says, grabbing another towel and fanning at the lumps more vigorously than Francis. "You'd get in trouble for that, I think."
"What happened?" Francis asks, looking around the disaster area that was once his kitchen.
Sheepish, Arthur looks away. "It was, well. I put the scones in the oven but got distracted by your cooking supplies - you know, you have a lot - and I forgot to set the timer. By the time I remembered, it was too late and I panicked and knocked over the flour on my way to the oven." He glances at Francis. "Told you I was a terrible cook."
Francis blinks, and then, still halfheartedly waving the dishcloth, staring at the inedible objects on the stove, watching Arthur bite his lip and blush, bursts into laughter that surprises both of them. He hasn't laughed in, oh, in a long time, since before the accident - and thinking of the accident makes him stop laughing. "I should have believed you," he says, his merriment now subdued. Still, he retains enough humor that he gives Arthur a brief smile (almost a smirk) and adds, "I'm never allowing you in my kitchen again."
xiii
They clean up. Together. Arthur gathers everything, scrapes the would-be scones into the trash, and piles the dishes in the sink. Francis rolls up his sleeves, stands and washes the dishes while Arthur wipes up the spilled flour. Francis dries the dishes, and Arthur puts them away.
When they finish, Francis feels better than he has in weeks, even though the running water has wrinkled his fingers.
Arthur is standing in the spotless kitchen, looking quite proud of himself in spite of the disaster he almost caused. There's a streak of white flour across his cheek. Francis points it out.
"You've got flour on your face."
"What?" Arthur asks and his hands go up, first to his nose, then to his forehead. "Where?"
Francis leans forward and brushes a thumb across Arthur's cheek, wiping it off. The contact is unexpected. Arthur stares at him, then; they stare at each other, Francis's hand on Arthur's face.
"There," Francis says, and moves his hand, turning away.
The rain has finally started and, instead of letting Arthur walk home in the deluge, Francis lets him scour the cupboards for tea and finally content himself with a mug of hot chocolate. They don't talk much. (Francis still does not know what to say, nothing comes to mind - he wonders at the easy conversationalist he was in a past life.)
They don't talk much, but it's enough.
xiv
The incident with the scones helps Francis, somehow. It takes a part of him that was twisted and puts it back together, like setting bones. He can almost feel the click when everything realigns.
Perhaps his foot wasn't the only thing that was broken in his fall. He wonders how long it will take for this interior fracture to heal. At least now, he imagines, it can heal.
Mornings are not quite so terrible anymore; they no longer have faces like foxes and eyes like demons. Instead, they peek at him with catlike snouts and ghostly gazes, and when they sit on his chest he almost wants to pet them.
When he wakes up at seven-thirty a.m., rather than six-thirty, he considers it a victory.
xv
He takes up cooking. It's a little surprising in retrospect; as all hobbies do, it seems to sneak up on him. He did not intend to do more than learn how to cook passably - perhaps it's a challenge against Arthur (surely Francis would not be that terrible), perhaps it is a symptom of his growing hunger. Leftovers and stale bread are no longer satisfying.
In his bookshelf he finds an old and tattered cookbook. Something that probably belonged to his mother, or maybe even his grandmother. It doesn't just have recipes; it also has information on the ingredients themselves, essays about what and what not to do with eggs, so on and so forth.
After much skimming, and a bit of deliberation, he chooses chocolate chip cookies. The recipe seems fairly easy, the cookies are generally liked, and if he ruins them, he will not ruin his dinner plans. He hands the list to Elizaveta when she comes to visit - flour, cane sugar, brown sugar, butter, eggs, shortening, chocolate chips, pecans. She's a bit surprised, but she seems happy too, and an hour later she comes back with the groceries.
The cookies turn out well. More than well, in fact; they're delicious. He makes up a plate of them for Arthur and savors the surprised look on his face when he takes a bite. So there, he thinks.
That's where it starts.
xvi
His cast is taken off sometime between the macarons and the coq au vin. Elizaveta picks him up, and he offers her a cookie.
"These are good, Francis!" she tells him after chewing and swallowing. Francis smiles. "I'm... I'm so glad," Elizaveta continues, but then she's getting his coat and he's getting his crutches and she never finishes her sentence.
Francis can imagine, probably, what she was going to say. I'm so glad you're moving on. I'm so glad you've found a hobby. So glad.
Doctor Honda, too, is pleased to see him. "You are healing very well," he says, "and I know we have discussed physical therapy before, but -"
Francis shakes his head. "I don't want it." He will be stubborn. A physical therapist certainly isn't as bad as a psychiatrist, but he does not want people to try to save him from his pain or lessen the impact of his injury. It took his life away, and Francis refuses to forget that.
"But," Honda continues, demure as usual, "I feel I will not recommend it, if you do these exercises." He hands Francis a sheet full of diagrammed stretches. "Keep these up. Next time you visit, if your muscle tone has not improved, you will begin therapy."
Francis looks at the sheet. "I can do that," he says, and Doctor Honda nods.
xvii
They saw off the cast, and it falls to either side of Francis's foot like two halves of a heart. His foot, the weight of the cast gone, floats up several inches like a ghost out of still water. It is white and he can see the veins, green and purple lines worming their way up to his ankle. When he compares his feet, the injured one is smaller, weaker. Atrophied.
There is a purple scar, hardly more than a dot, on the bottom of his foot. "That is where we made the incision," Doctor Honda tells him helpfully. "Wiggle your toes for me please."
Francis wiggles his toes.
xviii
He leaves the hospital with a cane - an impersonal object made of hollow aluminum. It makes him feel geriatric. He asks Eliza to make a brief stop before she drops him off at his apartment, and when he comes home, his new cane is thick cherry wood with a finished derby handle.
It makes a satisfying thunk on the ground as he walks, and Francis finds himself leaning on it a great deal more than he likes. But the thing is a good deal better than crutches.
When Arthur comes by, Francis is gratified to see his surprise. "Your cast is off," he says, and looks at Francis's feet, currently ensconced in light blue bedroom slippers.
"Yes," Francis says and picks up his new cane, standing and limping to the kitchen, where they spend most of their time. "Now I simply look old, not injured."
He is grateful when Arthur laughs.
xvix
"So what do you write?" Francis asks Arthur as they are sitting at the table, eating quick sandwiches made from fresh bread Francis baked and then heated on a skillet - a croque monsieur for both of them, hot and fresh with bechamel sauce.
Arthur looks up, almost surprised, and swallows. "Well I mean," he says, clearly groping for words, "nothing important, nothing special, I'm not," he laughs, "not a published novelist or anything..."
"I have never asked you before," Francis says. It still amazes him, how easily words come. How he no longer has to talk past a weight on his chest or an obstruction in his throat. How it takes a long time to think, and even longer to construct sentences, but once he does, the words float up effortlessly to his tongue. "You are a writer, are you not?"
Now Arthur is blushing. Francis wonders why he is so uncomfortable - and then he remembers his early days as a dancer, when each dance move was something precious. He would not even dance for his mother, at first; it was not a performance but rather a communion between his mind and his body.
"Surely you must write something," Francis adds, his tone almost teasing. "Otherwise, how could you afford to spend time with me?" Self-deprecating humor is almost all he has left, now.
"I write," Arthur says and laughs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Fine, don't laugh, I write poetry."
That is surprising. It is hard for Francis to imagine poetry coming from as prosaic a hand as Arthur's. He has always been the steady, pragmatic Englishman, who takes no nonsense and is as quick with his temper as he is with his God Save the Queen. "Poetry," Francis says.
"Don't laugh!" Arthur repeats, and Francis doesn't; he manages to keep a straight face even in spite of Arthur's blustering protestations. "It's, I mean... it's what I do." He looks away.
Francis has had some - more than some- experience in doing (and losing) what you love. "I believe you," he says. "Do you have books? Published?"
Arthur has refused to meet his eyes for the duration of this conversation, and he is still staring down at the table, at his half-eaten sandwich. "I, no, I..." He frowns, looks perplexed. "What I should have told you is, I'm a freelance writer. I usually do articles or columns for various magazines. Essays. Things. The poetry, that's... private."
And as he speaks his voice dwindles down into something that is almost - but not quite - quiet enough to be a whisper. Francis leans forward, fascinated by the sudden change he sees in Arthur. But it isn't a change. It is simply a different facet, a hidden layer, something Arthur covers up and turns away from the world. It's not vulnerability, not, at least, in Francis's eyes. To him (to his surprise), it is beauty.
"So you love poetry," Francis says. Arthur shrugs, nods. "Will you write me a poem?" he asks, half-smiling. "I want to see what you write."
"I..." Arthur begins and then blushes brightly, grumbling something and hiding back behind his shell of British stoicism. "No, no, I won't!"
But Francis is intrigued, and with this new feeling comes the stunning realization - he is almost, almost thankful for the circumstances that brought he and Arthur together.
xx
Francis doesn't mention Arthur's writing again, and Arthur doesn't bring it up himself. The poetry remains a secret between them, though Francis often finds himself thumbing through his old books, looking at poems - Donne, Shakespeare, Keats, Eliot - and wondering what Arthur's poems look like, what mysteries lie in notebooks and behind those green eyes.
Mornings are friendlier now, a little fluffier. They've gone from feral cats to strays, quick to bite but just as quick to accept a bowl of milk on the windowsill. Their disguise is so convincing, in fact, that Francis does leave a bowl of milk on the windowsill, until it curdles and begins to smell in the sun.
Arthur comes over almost every day now. Francis doesn't question why. He likes having someone he can talk to. He imagines Arthur does too, though of course neither of them will ever admit it.
xxi
A few weeks later, Natalya sends him tickets for her debut performance as the titular character in the ballet Giselle. It's a role she has wanted to play her entire life - it is a role for which nearly every ballerina longs - and Francis was so excited for her when she found out she was going to perform as Giselle for the upcoming season.
Of course, Francis was going to be dancing alongside her as Albrecht. Ivan has that role now, and Francis is sure he will do a marvelous job.
Regardless - there are two tickets for adjacent seats in a private box. Natalya is always doing her best for him. Though Francis is amused that she assumed anyone would want to accompany him, or that he would want to go with anyone else.
The next time Arthur comes over, he has barely hung up his coat and hat when Francis asks him, "Did you ever see me dance?"
Arthur turns halfway towards Francis, frowning slightly, and Francis can see the confusion in his eyes - is this a trick question? A confession? A breakdown? "No," he says after a pause. "I mean, on television, maybe, but not, not in performance, though I would have liked to, I mean," he says, stumbling over his own words with so many qualifications and hesitations that Francis cannot help but smile - slightly. A ghost of a grin.
"Good," he says. "Are you free tomorrow evening?"
"Yes," Arthur replies slowly, and the look in his eyes changes from confusion to suspicion. "Why?"
xxii
Arthur arrives at six-thirty sharp in his best evening wear, which is still shabby compared to Francis's crisply pressed, dove gray Yves Saint-Laurent suit and blue and silver silk tie. But it's good enough, Francis admits after he straightens Arthur's tie and adjusts his lapels.
"I've never been to a ballet before," Arthur comments at the bus stop. Neither of them have a car - they dress in style but travel in poverty.
"Then you have been missing out on one of the greatest art forms in the world," Francis replies.
But he's glad that this is Arthur's first ballet, and even happier that Arthur has never seen him perform. He's not sure why it is so necessary - this way, maybe, Arthur cannot tie him back to his past, cannot see what Francis is missing now, the way everyone else can.
"Isn't it strange?" Arthur remarks as he steps down from the bus, holding out a hand to assist Francis.
"Isn't what strange?" Francis asks. The bus has brought them straight to the front of the theater, for which Francis is glad, because the walk to the bus stop is long and his foot is aching from disuse.
Arthur holds open the door for him. "That we're friends," he says, and Francis laughs.
"We're friends?" he repeats, feigning incredulity, and Arthur kicks at him. Francis pretends to hit him with his cane and oh, he thinks, there goes his reputation.
xxiii
"The ballet is a love triangle," Francis says, leaning over in his seat to talk to Arthur. Natalya has outdone herself with the tickets, he thinks to himself; they have, unquestionably, some of the best seats in the house. "Between the beautiful maid Giselle, the huntsman Hilarion, and Count Albrecht."
Arthur is looking at the program. "It seems more like a fairytale," he says, his forehead crinkled in a slight frown. "What with all these ghosts..."
"Wilis," Francis corrects, tapping the correct term on Arthur's program.
"Wilis," Arthur says, making a face. "And it doesn't seem right to me that this Albrecht gets the girl, when Hilarion is truly in the right..."
"Ah," Francis says and holds up a finger to stop Arthur's speech, "but what does 'right' matter when one is in love?" With the murmur of the crowd and the warm golden lighting and the feel of his silk shirt against his skin, all his romantic notions are coming back to him. He feels enveloped in a golden haze, somehow ethereal, somehow precious, far removed from his usual fog of melancholy and depression.
Arthur, of course, snorts in disdain. "Whatever you say," he replies, and flips through the rest of the thick, glossy booklet. It's full of news regarding the upcoming season and the other ballets being performed. There is a glossy picture of a ballerina on the front.
"That is my dear friend Natalya," Francis says, pointing at her before Arthur can open the program again. "Natalya Braginski. She is this season's grand ballerina." He smiles slightly. "I have known her since I was sixteen years old."
Arthur looks at the slender figure in her white leotard and thin skirt. She is standing in attitude en pointe, one leg in the air, arms spread gracefully. Her silvery blond hair is caught up in a bun at the back of her neck, and the photograph highlights her profile, with her thin lips and arched nose. "She's... very pretty," he says hesitantly.
"More imposing than pretty, I should think," Francis corrects, and laughs. "But a hard worker, and very devoted. She will give an excellent performance tonight, I guarantee it."
xxiv
Natalya does indeed give an excellent performance. Francis watches the way Arthur's eyes glitter, reflecting the light of the stage, and tries to ignore the ache in his chest.
xxv
It is a quiet bus ride back. Arthur, for his part, seems content to remain quiet and think about the performance he just witnessed. Francis feels his old depression settling back in with a vengeance. The headlights of passing cars are eyes watching him in the darkness. Tomorrow morning is already slinking along rooftops, following the bus, tracking him down.
There is a weight in his chest so heavy he can barely breathe.
He does not regret attending Giselle. He is proud of Natalya and all she has accomplished, glad that her brother Ivan seems more than equal to taking the role of danseur noble. And yet this pride is tainted by a thick bitterness that reminds him he will never walk the dance floor again, inhale the scent of rosin, run across the boards and leap into the air like a bird in flight.
Never. Never.
His death sentence comes back to him with renewed force. He is a man awaiting execution - or, no, he is a man already executed, a head in a basket of severed heads, losing consciousness, losing awareness of pain.
Francis's mouth tightens. A gruesome metaphor, that. He reaches out instinctively, takes Arthur's hand, laces their fingers together and holds on tightly. Arthur looks surprised at first, but then his expression softens and he squeezes Francis's hand in return.
Perhaps he knows some of the thoughts running through Francis's head (though how could he?), because he leans across his seat and whispers, "It will be alright."
Oh, to have hope again, Francis thinks, and believe such pretty lies.
xxvi
Arthur gets off the bus with him and ends up following Francis into his flat, mostly because Francis still has his hand in a death grip. He even manages to unlock his door one-handed, as Arthur waits behind him. He's scared, Francis is; scared of the look on Arthur's face, whatever it might be (he doesn't want to see it), scared of the possibilities looming in front of them both like a towering blank canvas or an endless dark abyss.
Inside, Francis turns off a light and forces himself both to let go of Arthur's hand and to actually look at Arthur, meeting his eyes. He takes a breath, opens his mouth, and then shuts it again, shifting from foot to foot even though his weaker limb still twinges a little when he leans on it.
"Erm, thank you," Arthur says finally, after he's done massaging some circulation back into his hand. "For the ballet, you know, for inviting me, and... everything." He looks at Francis's face and then away - up, down, around the small hallway. He seems to be about as nervous as Francis is, or maybe that's a trick of the light.
"You're welcome," Francis says and takes a step backwards. But he catches himself at the last moment - catches himself forcefully and almost bodily, hands reaching out a short distance and catching empty air. "Arthur, I -"
He speaks at the same time Arthur says, "Francis -" and they both stop short, looking at each other; Francis wonders whether his own startled gaze is mirrored in Arthur's wide eyes and slightly opened mouth. "You go first," Arthur says finally.
Francis's lips tighten slightly. "I was just going to say, if you wouldn't mind, I mean, would you..." He looks away, turning his gaze to the floor and maybe the legs of the end table by the door. "I do not want to be alone tonight and..."
"I was just going to ask," Arthur says, clearly relieved; their eyes meet and Arthur gives him a swift smile. "I can kip on the couch, or..."
But Francis ends up putting Arthur in the guest room is dusty and filled with boxes (of sheet music, old books, trophies, certificates of the past) and garment bags (of costumes, delicate fabrics doomed to remain in storage forever now), but the bed is mostly clear. Francis brings out a new blanket and shakes it out before spreading it across the bed. He puts new pillowcases on the pillows, too.
"There you are," he says. He has not entered this room - not even opened the door - since his accident. And he could not have done it alone; the only reason he is touching the boxes, looking at all these tangible memories, is Arthur, standing awkwardly at the door and waiting for a place to sleep. "There should be an extra toothbrush in the bathroom drawer," Francis adds.
xxvii
It's dark out and Francis is thinking about everything and nothing, really. He stares at his ceiling, colored a dim bluish white in the glow from ambient light outside. Some days, he has trouble going to sleep, for whatever reason. Tonight, though, comes with a much more specific problem; he is hyperaware of Arthur sleeping soundly (he imagines) not ten feet away.
And with that comes the congruent awareness of the guest room, the trophy room, and Francis is suddenly struck with the image of Arthur laid out on a cold, marble sarcophagus, with all of Francis's ghosts standing over him like silent guards.
Francis pushes off his covers and stands, limping over (now he can walk certain distances without the help of crutches or his cane) to the door of the guest room, pushing it open. It isn't a tomb, just a room full of boxes, and the low light from the hall spills inside and colors Arthur's hair a rich, unnatural gold.
He stands there and thinks of the old proverb noting ventured, nothing gained.
Nothing ventured, and his feet feel glued to the rug in the hallway, even though he's already shifting to take the weight off his bad foot. Nothing gained and wonders how long it will take him to get to sleep if he just turns and goes back to bed right now.
"You're letting the light in, you know," Arthur says. The pile of blankets barely rustles.
xxviii
They end up in Francis's room, mostly because the atmosphere of the guest room gets too heavy after too long, with all the dust and old ghosts. "It's all of my things," he tells Arthur. "From ballet. Trophies, costumes..."
There is silence from Arthur and Francis uses the time to sit, to watch the stationary shadows in the hallway, to embrace the warm, solid feeling of a body beside him. It has been a while.
"I miss it," he says after several moments, glancing sidelong at Arthur (just a shape in the dark) and then back down at his lap and his clasped hands. "I don't know if I can live... without it, but I'm trying. I suppose, in a way, that's all we can do." He shrugs, which makes the mattress move a little underneath them.
"Francis, I," Arthur begins, then reaches out to touch his hand. Francis unclasps his own hands and laces his fingers with Arthur's. "I don't want you to feel this way," he says, the words coming out of his mouth in a rush. "I don't like it, but I think, I mean, I like you, and I'm glad I got to know you, even though you feel... like that."
It's funny that writers can be the most inarticulate people, without pens in their hands, Francis thinks, though Arthur is the first writer he's really known. And anyway, his fingers tighten around Arthur and he leans closer. "Thank you," he says softly, and then chuckles and adds, "I think," before the atmosphere gets too heavy.
And then there is another silence. Francis looks at Arthur, so close to him their shoulders are brushing; his green eyes are wide but shadowed in the dark. He swallows - thinks about endless universes of possibilities. Thinks about how certain things die and certain things start to grow, all at the same time.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," he says out loud, and as Arthur turns to look at him, curious, he leans in (moving with some sort of grace, some sort of finitude, like a transfer from position to position) and kisses him.
xxiv
Their intimacy is sudden and yet somehow inevitable; they fall together like gravity, like destiny, like every trite metaphor Francis has ever heard. It's funny that he can only describe these things in silly metaphors, but he is no writer. He is - he was - a dancer.
He thinks about movement, about sliding his hand up Arthur's chest, moving his thigh between Arthur's legs. He thinks about touch, he thinks about Arthur's eyes in the dark.
Francis is a dancer, but with Arthur, like this, he thinks about poetry.
xxx
When Francis wakes up, it's already eight thirty a.m. and the morning is curled up in the corner of the room, purring contentedly. It meets his eyes, blinks, flicks its ears, and licks a paw.
Francis smiles at it, rolls over, puts an arm around Arthur, and goes back to sleep.