[fic] Paris Calling [france/england]
Title: Paris Calling
Pairing(s): France/England
Rating/Warnings: R for non-graphic sex and war violence.
Word Count: 3,863.
'Verse: WWII canon.
Summary: Seventeen snapshots of Francis Bonnefoy's life between January '40 and October '41 (and one of Arthur Kirkland's in June '47).
Notes: Originally written for hetalia_kink, with the prompt of 'we'll always have Paris', with WWII, retreating!England and a happy resolution. I've been meaning to deanon on this for ages now, but life is pulling an Aziraphale and thwarting me at every turn.
..
one.
The cafés look black and white in Montmartre, like Exhibition photographs. He drags Arthur in from the street, up into a minuscule chamber under the roofs; their palms are clammy and hot, bunched together, fingers twined close as they scramble up the crooked stairs. The door almost collapses before they slam it shut. They crumble, on a thick-clothed mattress that smells faintly of cabbages.
They haven’t seen each other in three months, and so they shag accordingly: blindly at first, scrabbling for skin and flesh and heat and purchase, teeth and noses clashing - and then slower, with deeper, thorough movements, and trying hard not to think.
“Christ,” Arthur says, later, one hand clutching Francis’ hip. “Christ.” Francis’ breath is shaky and hot on his face. They are a heady tangle of legs and arms and hair, Francis’ head lolling, back and forth, puppet-like, on his shoulder - cramped together on a cramped bed in a cramped room, like an English lullaby, a silly rhyme.
It grows cold as the night wears on, and they hear the soft hooting of some bird in the eaves of the roof, somewhere they can’t see between the wooden beams. Francis sleeps in a heap of whimpers.
two.
Fully naked, he lights a cigarette and sits on the windowsill, extinguishing the match with a flick of the hand. Arthur, in front of him, scowls, square hands working efficiently at the buttons of his waistcoat, and Francis’ smile slips smugly: he has licked at these hands yesterday night, has lapped at fingertips and nipped at knuckles, until Arthur was breathless and moaning, chest heaving underneath him. It was, overall, a very good night.
“You’re getting that look again,” Arthur says - knocking aside his ankle from across his - and smirking, one hand on his hip. “Exhibitionnist.”
“Nice weather for it,” Francis remarks, conversationally, neck arching.
“Wanker.”
“Tu m’adores.”
“Don’t know that I do,” Arthur mutters, and kisses him deep and hard, both hands carefully cradling Francis’ face between rough-skinned palms and circling thumbs. Francis, gasping, breaks off, and curls his fingers in Arthur’s belt-loops, pressing him close and flush to his skin.
three.
By the end of the week, Arthur smells like smoke everywhere. It’s sweet, in his hair and the crook between his throat and neck, along the slant of his jawline, across his eyelids. Francis could swear some of it catches on to his eyebrows as Arthur takes another drag, the cigarette hardly visible but for its flickering orange glow in the rapidly-falling snow. There isn’t much anyone can see, anyway, from the Pont Neuf at six in the evening in mid-January, apart from the balancing lantern of a stuttering, passing cab and the square, bulky silhouette of Notre-Dame a little way up the Seine.
Arthur kicks his travelling bad aside, apparently not caring very much about anything inside it, and Francis snatches the cigarette away from him, smoothing down a sudden rush of irritation with a sudden(er) rush of nicotine; it unfurls all the way down and into his lungs. Arthur snorts.
“Don’t bother to ask, y’wanker.” Francis smirks at him lazily, and when Arthur recovers the cigarette it is to drag enormous puffs, huffing out smoke between each word. “So-“ puff- “I’ll see you-“ puff- “up at the front-“ puff- “yeah?” and drops the cigarette butt to crush it under the heel of his boot. “Yeah?”
Francis nods absently, murmuring in agreement and focusing instead on how very green Arthur’s eyes look, how flecked with snow his eyelashes. It is an image of Arthur he captures, with his hands stuffed in his uniform pockets and his hair dark with humidity, a scowl descending upon his features - captures it, and hides it down into his lungs and into his bones, so far down he can keep it there. Arthur: in Paris, January 21st, 1940.
He thinks: We’ll always have this. And he adds: Whatever happens.
He must have said something interesting, though, because Arthur grins sharply and tucks another cigarette out, tapping it against the bridge’s stone parapet before lighting it, hands cupped. He takes a drag, with that funny little upset jerk of the head, and then leans across, and breathes it out into Francis’ mouth, all smoke, sweet and coiling. Francis captures it. Swallows it down.
four.
He goes up in February. It is a cold ride, the trains filled with soldiers, barred up heavily with metal and wooden slats, and reeking of smoke and alcohol. Nobody knows each other here, but the liquor unties the tongues, and the men talk. It’s rather uninteresting and utterly silly, but Francis takes pleasure in listening to them anyway, curled up against the window in casual clothing: they look sideways at him, sometimes, with defiant, puzzled eyes, as though not quite certain what to understand of him.
Story has it that some men have taken to travelling on the roof, and that their skin was turned as dark and grey as the smoke itself.
Story has it that the Germans have devils’ tails and foxes’ ears, and the long teeth of hungry wolves.
Story has it that there is an Englishman who cannot be killed up at the front, with eyes so green they might swallow you down, and the laughter of a madman.
Francis snorts at that, and the glances turn threatening. He pulls his hat down over his eyes, mouth twisting in a sneer, and pretends to fall asleep.
five.
The last time he was killed by gunshot was on the 17th of October, 1916. The bullet went cleanly through his chest and across his heart, bruising two of his ribs and thankfully straying clear of his spinal column as it went out; he felt it like an ice-cold trail piercing through flesh and bone. And his heart stopped for two utterly gorgeous seconds before his blood flooded right back in and then out, and two harsh, slamming beats gasped him back to life.
This time the bullet tears at his lungs, and all the air rushes right out him. It is a dizzy two seconds before the fabric knots itself anew like a tight web across his chest, and he sees two of his men crumple as he staggers, stumbling almost onto their bodies. And they are so close now that he can nearly the Germans’ faces, as pale and scared and determined as their own must be.
He only briefly registers the sudden burst of rifle fire coming from behind his back, only briefly registers the shock on the soldiers’ faces before ten and thirteen and fifteen of them grapple and fall. The rest of them scarper, before Francis, blinking, hazy, can even count them, to the yells of Les Anglais! ricocheting from all around him.
And yes, right there, heaving his way up from the left trench and into the no man’s land, leading the head of an armed garrison, Arthur, with a long gun in one hand, and something dark and dried on his features. He is not quite smirking, but there is an odd grace to every step he takes that Francis recognizes; the enticing swing of each step and the tilt of the head, the cock of the gun, as though some invisible ship’s deck was humming underneath him. He does not even realize he’s fallen to his knees into the mud until Arthur stares down at him, unsmiling, and then leans in and grabs his wrist to help him roughly up.
“Can’t take care of yourself, can you,” Arthur says sharply, fingers catching on the bloody mess that seeps into the front of Francis’ uniform vest.
Francis blinks, still hazy. He wants to say, Bonsoir, Arthur, I was expecting you, and flirt until their brains explode. He wants to bite down into that bloodied mouth.
six.
They do not benefit from proper lodgings until a little town near Lille, whole half-lit hotel has clean rooms and cool, smooth sheets. He tumbles Arthur down into them - nails digging in soft skin just so to have Arthur hissing with discomfort, and kicking up a thigh between his own - and kisses him directly into heady, open-mouthed slickness. It's a hard, frantic grasp for clothes and skin, legs tangling, hands everywhere: Francis' lifting one of Arthur's thighs against his hipbone to rock against him harder, Arthur's caught in his hair, fingernails scraping sharply against the sides and back of his neck. His cock is a hard, taut line against Francis'.
They're over within the minute, with too much frustration between them over the last few weeks to last longer, and just enough good sense, and timing, to do away with whatever much clothing they can. Arthur's teeth bite down against the thick tendon on the side of his neck, and Francis snarls helplessly, thrusting deliberately into Arthur's groin for all of thirty seconds before their rhythm slips into something frantic and hurried, thighs tightening, catching each other's breaths in their mouths.
Arthur comes like a wave crashing, utterly mute, hips shifting and thrusting up, and Francis, fascinated, can only swallow a whimper and stare: Arthur's eyes are smoky green and impossibly wide, his mouth clamped shut, chest heaving so fast he might just break. It is nothing Francis has never seen before, hundreds of times before, but the dip of Arthur's lips, their slight twists and turns, and the hotel light shadowing his sex-dark hair, make the dark, coiling knot into his gut pool lower and then flood.
“Oh, my dear,” he whispers brokenly, and comes and comes and comes.
seven.
“Right,” Arthur says after two hours of tracing hipbones and thighs with hand and mouth and cock. “Right,” and pads out of bed on unsteady legs, wobbling uncertainly across the room to grab at his duffel. “Fuuuck. Right, so this,” and returns to drop a square, flat bottle of brandy cold between Francis’ shoulderblades. And Francis says,
“Oh,”
in a breathy, awed sort of way, and the first taste, stolen from across Arthur’s lips, makes him see fucking stars.
The alcohol is like gold in his mouth and in his throat, intricate and complicated, alien, here. (When he closes his eyes he sees Cambridge, surprisingly, and the tweed of Arthur’s suit, tiding light at the window, one evening in late August, 1906. He sees it-everything at once, half-clear but perfect, like the old, odd Exhibition photographs, tainted with sunset colours.) He pawprints brandy-sticky-orange fingerprints on Arthur’s cheek, jaw, chin, nose, everywhere. And then he sleeps. Arthur curls his fingers in the fringed blanket, pushing his mouth against dark hair.
eight.
“Very well,” Francis says, against the mouth of a liquor bottle. The mouthful scorches down his throat. “Do it.”
Arthur grunts, picks up Francis’ arm with sharp, jerky movements, and snaps his shoulder backwards. Francis’ eyes burn white, and he stumbles forward blindly with a mute yell of pain, into Arthur: his free hand gripping his elbow so tight its fingers look like bones.
“Okay,” Arthur says purposefully, breathing as though he’s just run a marathon. “Okay.” His thumb presses down onto the soft skin of Francis’ inner wrist; it sends a flood of blood rushing up to Francis’ brain. The taste of Arthur’s sweat under his lips and Arthur’s arm coiled like a vice around his hips all shut him up, wrap him up, expose him fully to the sensation of his throbbing wrist, and he only gradually becomes aware of everything else: a dozen soldiers around them, the rickety-rat-rat of the rifles a few yards behind, the officer’s distressed orders as they prepare to move out of the trench and set off towards the east. The sky looks like an infected wound.
“Alright, then?” Arthur asks, into his hair, and tightly.
Francis nods, bites a kiss down on his collarbone, and straightens, wincing. “Merde. Putain de guerre.”
“Whiner,” Arthur shots back absently, and tosses a roll of gauze at his head.
nine.
Dunkirk feels like a blood clot.
ten.
By the end of the day the entire bay is up in flames. The gas has come down three hours ago, and the city, the sky, and the sea are lit up by hundreds of torches and lanterns and fires on land, and the hundred electric glows on board of hundreds of boats, flocking in on the dark water - vessels and ferries and dinghies and rundown crafts, each swallowing as many men as possible before giving way to another. Arthur, posted on the side of the deck, wrapped up in a dark cloak, carrying a lantern, looks as though out of the nineteenth century.
“Bougez pas,” he orders to his fifty-odd men grouped at his back, half-drenched and defiant. Arthur's head snaps up at the sound of French, and his mouth twists into a dark, grim expression; he grabs Francis' arm tightly, squeezing, not caring any for Francis' wince and soft murmur of pain as his shoulder wound throbs.
“Get on a boat, you asshole. You've taken way too long already.”
“There are over ten thousand French soldiers arriving in Dunkerque this very second, Angleterre, and many more in an hour,” Francis mutters, cutting a glance towards the old yacht that, closest to them, is gobbling up soldiers. “Your Navy, such as it is tonight, will not be able to take them all on.”
“I'm not leaving you here,” Arthur snaps. “To be massacred. I'm not.”
“I cannot leave my land, Arthur,” Francis snarls back. “Not when it is about to be mangled -“
“You can't stay here, either.” Two of Arthur's fingers dig into his inner wrist so hard Francis hisses. “Let me take you south, at least. The Germans haven't gone that far yet.”
Yet, Francis thinks, and, looking into Arthur's dark, tired face, he wonders when was the last time either of them has slept. They were separated fifty miles and two days from Dunkirk, left to reach town by their own means; Francis has not closed his eyes ever since, and neither, he believes, has Arthur. It seeps into his bones, the fatigue, at the base of his nape, behind his eyelids.
“Very well,” he murmurs. “I have fifty men directly under my orders here. Take us down to Cherbourg; we will make our way back to Paris from there.”
Arthur's fingers squeeze his wrist hard enough to reduce it to bone dust. Francis ignores this, shouts orders in French, and does not watch how dark the lantern light paints Arthur's hair and eyelashes across his cheeks, like black ink, or like blood.
eleven.
Pétain demands the armistice on the morning of June 17th, and it's not even a surprise. Francis, locked up in his shabby hotel room, sleeps with his face against the window, pressed to the cold glass, looking out westward. He wakes in late afternoon, head pounding and unexpected tears running down his cheeks.
twelve.
And then it’s out, out, into winter ’41: they dress him up with rich fabric, white coats, fur hats, turquoise ornaments, envelop him like a Russian doll; he visits the Opéra of Paris and the Comédie-Française, and the Eiffel Tower and the Opéra-Comique and the Champs-Élysées and the restaurants streaming with light and sweet cocktails, velvet-lined cars and voluptuous prostitutes, and Paris rots.
Paris rots in the lines at the corners of his eyes, the thrumming in his ears, the dislocated bones and strained muscles, in the thick layer of bile on his tongue. He wonders if those who wrench his mouth and thighs open can taste it there.
thirteen.
They leave him the bathroom - toilet and shower and scented soap and as much water as he wishes - because he must be clean. He snarls at his reflection when he steps in, the man in the mirror with the high cheekbones and lowered lashes, eyes blue and husky. He prefers to be naked as, hunched over the toilet bowl, he vomits his throat clean of all the fine treats they stuff him with (heady wines, spiced poultry, and sugary macaroons). He showers for the longest time, shuddering on the tiles as the water eventually runs freezing, and - almost - flinching from the fluffy white bathrobe hung on the towel rack: there was an evening in 1904 when he and Arthur were wrapped in it, drinking champagne and light off of each other’s skin.
It is a strange moment, like negative photography: the two images of the two bedrooms overlap, black lines crossing, greys melting into white, and then grey again - one over the other, suspended.
Then there is a gold line flickering under the door, and Francis shakes his head, shakes his hair free of water, and closes his eyes to the approaching thud of military boots.
fourteen.
And then they forget about him. The new government is implanting itself firmly in Vichy, somewhere down near his spleen, and he remains behind in Paris, flanked by half a dozen Nazi officers who after a week are more interested in visiting Pigalle’s maisons closes than in keeping an eye on him. He wanders around the streets, smoking his precious few Gauloises and counting down the increasing number of houses whose doors and windows have been shut down and barred. Once he helps a boy catch a rat for a stew.
It snows heavily that winter, the dark, thick snow that makes the streets greasy and slippery, and makes it almost impossible for the cars to drive through. The night comes unusually early, and the air is thick with humidity; in the few avenues that still have gas, the streetlamps make for huge, blurred glows of rainy, dirtied orange light. (Some say that it is not snow at all, but the ash that the wind blows onto them from burning London. Francis is not quite sure he believes that.)
fifteen.
He dissolves, at some point. He melts into the cracks between the damp cobbles of his streets, between the thick concrete of the pavement and the white-washed walls, into slippery-wet gutters, into Parisian rain. It washes him away, mud and soiled snow cleansing his body as he tides into the arms of men and women with sunken eyes and gnarled lips; he huddles with them, arms gathered, close together, bodies drinking in warmth and sweat and - yes, underneath the filthy clothes and the crusted dirt - and love.
sixteen.
They whisper. They hurry, scrabbling and grappling at stone and wood and metal, climbing like soft-pawed animals, hushed, murmur, whisper, whisper. They find creases and holes, gaps, fill them to the brim with sparks and future light; and scramble down, trailing wires behind them, entangling them in a vicious spider's web. They scatter, then, footfalls soft upon the dry leaves and firewood. They scatter, they regroup, and they wait.
The bridge explodes and it's like fireworks, in his chest.
seventeen.
It's five months before they manage to scrape up a working radio transmitter and another two before they come across the right frequency to break into with an old codename. The Catacombs are damp and cold in late October, and the slow fizzle from the speaker creates expectant background noise - loud enough to reverberate across the tight, dark walls - murmuring almost over and across the hushed voice of the man sitting at the dials. Francis would not even be able to hear it if he were not standing directly behind him.
“Et... voilà,” the radio says, screwing up a dial to concentrate the sizzling into one long, soft whine. He has rather amazing hands, this boy, working and moving through the air with the sharp knowledge of an amateur, spinning noise out of white, white silence. He is very, so very young, and reminds Francis a little of Mathieu. “Hier-“
“Who is this?” a harsh, jerky voice barks in rough, corrugated English that twists all the way down into Francis' gut. “This frequency is closed. Who. Is. This.”
“Ah,” the radio says, and blinks up at Francis -
“I will shut down this channel in exactly ten seconds if you do not tell me your name and code immediately -“ as they scramble to change places, Francis grabbing the microphone with shuddering fingers, “as well as how you managed to break into this frequency. Do you hear?”
Francis smiles. “Bonsoir, Arthur.”
(one, ii)
Francis is, in the minuscule, under-the-roofs bedroom, sprawled all over the bed (admittedly changed to a better one, as is most of the furniture) - limbs kicked out, clothes everywhere; his face is pushing, sullenly, into the cushions, one arm slung over mussed blond, and Arthur’s attention is drawn inexorably to the pale, flushed skin - one nervous hand dangling down to the side, the other hidden, folded into ribs, and bare feet, a triangle of collarbone under the askew shirt. There are shoes astray on the rug, and cufflinks on the parquet where Arthur picks them.
He reaches out for the hand and touches bone-like wrist, white and smooth, turns it, touches the soft, inner skin with the pad of his thumb. Francis shivers all over, and Arthur feels it, too, down to his bones.
“Francis,” he says, mouth catching on a lock of hair; and then, changing his mind, he climbs up and straddles the small of his back, splays his hands, palms, the tip of his fingers, over the messy gold across his nape. Francis arcs his neck into the caress, purrs. His clothes are beautiful and fine, his shirt a blue Arthur remembers from a package Matthew sent a few days ago, and he derives an odd pleasure from cresting waves onto the sea-smooth fabric, from rippling it across Francis’ shoulders and down his spine.
He slides his fingers down, under the hem, tips brushing the sides of Francis’ waist: it makes the shirt tide up, a little, just high enough to expose a few inches of soft, hidden skin, just enough to make Francis tremble and sigh, and bury himself deeper into the cushions. Arthur kisses that, too.
He works at Francis’ back - works out the knots and tense muscles under his skin, all the little imperfections, and Francis melts into his hands, onto the couch, with little sighs and whimpers and ’ah, oui…’s. And Arthur almost sobs, almost, because this is beautiful, this: Francis’ quiet sounds, faint noises of purring pleasure, and the long, wiry body humming under his palms, the shake of the head like a gold blur - god, so fucking beautiful, he thinks, growling, bloody gorgeous, just there.
“Bloody idiot,” he murmurs, and Francis turns his head, smiles blue at him underneath the arch of his arm. Arthur leans down to taste that smile with the sun in his eyes.
fin.
End Notes: These are the translations and historical notes I put in on the meme; I figured they were just as necessary here.
Translations:
Tu m’adores: You adore me.
Putain de guerre: Fucking war.
Bougez pas: Don’t move.
Dunkerque is the French name for Dunkirk.
Maison close: a brothel.
Et… voilà. (…) Hier…: And… there you go. (…) Yesterday…
Bonsoir: Good evening.
Historical Notes:
During WWI and the beginning of WWII, French propaganda pictured Germans as having devils’ tails and foxes ears and eyes (and vice-versa). According to a document in my old high school history textbook, in 1940, when France was occupied, some French people expressed their astonishment at soldiers looking ‘just like human beings’. (Though it is more likely that those were ironical remarks rather than genuine surprise.)
Lille is a town in Northern France, close to both Dunkirk and the front lines.
The evacuation of the British soldiers from French land began on the 26th of May, 1940 at Dunkirk, and lasted nine days. A flotilla of 400 Navy ships was aided from the 27th onwards by about 700 civilian vessels, and by the time Dunkirk surrendered to German attacks on the 4th of June, about 186,000 British soldiers and 125,000 French (and other Allies) had been evacuated. About 40,000 French soldiers were captured, though, and most of those who had been evacuated were shipped back to Cherbourg to continue the fight.
On June 17th, 1940, the General Pétain announced over the radio that he would have to submit to signing an armistice with the German army the very evening. This was not merely a military capitulation, which might have led to possibilities of negotiations (not very likely, though), but a full-out political armistice, which meant France was entirely subjected to Hitler’s decisions. The following day, the General de Gaulle called out to the French people over the BBC waves, declaring that France ‘was not alone’ and that movements of Resistance were to be set into place against the soon-to-be Vichy government.
Such movements became more and more obvious as the war wore on and the wind turned back against the Nazis. The Free French’s most prominent victory was the liberation of Paris in August 1944, although they were (obviously) helped in this by the British, American and Canadian troops that had been flooding in since D-Day.
After the war, France’s economy was extremely down, and it wasn’t till 1947 and the setting into place of the Marshall Plan by the USA that it began to pick up again-and the social mood of its population along with it.
Pairing(s): France/England
Rating/Warnings: R for non-graphic sex and war violence.
Word Count: 3,863.
'Verse: WWII canon.
Summary: Seventeen snapshots of Francis Bonnefoy's life between January '40 and October '41 (and one of Arthur Kirkland's in June '47).
Notes: Originally written for hetalia_kink, with the prompt of 'we'll always have Paris', with WWII, retreating!England and a happy resolution. I've been meaning to deanon on this for ages now, but life is pulling an Aziraphale and thwarting me at every turn.
..
one.
The cafés look black and white in Montmartre, like Exhibition photographs. He drags Arthur in from the street, up into a minuscule chamber under the roofs; their palms are clammy and hot, bunched together, fingers twined close as they scramble up the crooked stairs. The door almost collapses before they slam it shut. They crumble, on a thick-clothed mattress that smells faintly of cabbages.
They haven’t seen each other in three months, and so they shag accordingly: blindly at first, scrabbling for skin and flesh and heat and purchase, teeth and noses clashing - and then slower, with deeper, thorough movements, and trying hard not to think.
“Christ,” Arthur says, later, one hand clutching Francis’ hip. “Christ.” Francis’ breath is shaky and hot on his face. They are a heady tangle of legs and arms and hair, Francis’ head lolling, back and forth, puppet-like, on his shoulder - cramped together on a cramped bed in a cramped room, like an English lullaby, a silly rhyme.
It grows cold as the night wears on, and they hear the soft hooting of some bird in the eaves of the roof, somewhere they can’t see between the wooden beams. Francis sleeps in a heap of whimpers.
two.
Fully naked, he lights a cigarette and sits on the windowsill, extinguishing the match with a flick of the hand. Arthur, in front of him, scowls, square hands working efficiently at the buttons of his waistcoat, and Francis’ smile slips smugly: he has licked at these hands yesterday night, has lapped at fingertips and nipped at knuckles, until Arthur was breathless and moaning, chest heaving underneath him. It was, overall, a very good night.
“You’re getting that look again,” Arthur says - knocking aside his ankle from across his - and smirking, one hand on his hip. “Exhibitionnist.”
“Nice weather for it,” Francis remarks, conversationally, neck arching.
“Wanker.”
“Tu m’adores.”
“Don’t know that I do,” Arthur mutters, and kisses him deep and hard, both hands carefully cradling Francis’ face between rough-skinned palms and circling thumbs. Francis, gasping, breaks off, and curls his fingers in Arthur’s belt-loops, pressing him close and flush to his skin.
three.
By the end of the week, Arthur smells like smoke everywhere. It’s sweet, in his hair and the crook between his throat and neck, along the slant of his jawline, across his eyelids. Francis could swear some of it catches on to his eyebrows as Arthur takes another drag, the cigarette hardly visible but for its flickering orange glow in the rapidly-falling snow. There isn’t much anyone can see, anyway, from the Pont Neuf at six in the evening in mid-January, apart from the balancing lantern of a stuttering, passing cab and the square, bulky silhouette of Notre-Dame a little way up the Seine.
Arthur kicks his travelling bad aside, apparently not caring very much about anything inside it, and Francis snatches the cigarette away from him, smoothing down a sudden rush of irritation with a sudden(er) rush of nicotine; it unfurls all the way down and into his lungs. Arthur snorts.
“Don’t bother to ask, y’wanker.” Francis smirks at him lazily, and when Arthur recovers the cigarette it is to drag enormous puffs, huffing out smoke between each word. “So-“ puff- “I’ll see you-“ puff- “up at the front-“ puff- “yeah?” and drops the cigarette butt to crush it under the heel of his boot. “Yeah?”
Francis nods absently, murmuring in agreement and focusing instead on how very green Arthur’s eyes look, how flecked with snow his eyelashes. It is an image of Arthur he captures, with his hands stuffed in his uniform pockets and his hair dark with humidity, a scowl descending upon his features - captures it, and hides it down into his lungs and into his bones, so far down he can keep it there. Arthur: in Paris, January 21st, 1940.
He thinks: We’ll always have this. And he adds: Whatever happens.
He must have said something interesting, though, because Arthur grins sharply and tucks another cigarette out, tapping it against the bridge’s stone parapet before lighting it, hands cupped. He takes a drag, with that funny little upset jerk of the head, and then leans across, and breathes it out into Francis’ mouth, all smoke, sweet and coiling. Francis captures it. Swallows it down.
four.
He goes up in February. It is a cold ride, the trains filled with soldiers, barred up heavily with metal and wooden slats, and reeking of smoke and alcohol. Nobody knows each other here, but the liquor unties the tongues, and the men talk. It’s rather uninteresting and utterly silly, but Francis takes pleasure in listening to them anyway, curled up against the window in casual clothing: they look sideways at him, sometimes, with defiant, puzzled eyes, as though not quite certain what to understand of him.
Story has it that some men have taken to travelling on the roof, and that their skin was turned as dark and grey as the smoke itself.
Story has it that the Germans have devils’ tails and foxes’ ears, and the long teeth of hungry wolves.
Story has it that there is an Englishman who cannot be killed up at the front, with eyes so green they might swallow you down, and the laughter of a madman.
Francis snorts at that, and the glances turn threatening. He pulls his hat down over his eyes, mouth twisting in a sneer, and pretends to fall asleep.
five.
The last time he was killed by gunshot was on the 17th of October, 1916. The bullet went cleanly through his chest and across his heart, bruising two of his ribs and thankfully straying clear of his spinal column as it went out; he felt it like an ice-cold trail piercing through flesh and bone. And his heart stopped for two utterly gorgeous seconds before his blood flooded right back in and then out, and two harsh, slamming beats gasped him back to life.
This time the bullet tears at his lungs, and all the air rushes right out him. It is a dizzy two seconds before the fabric knots itself anew like a tight web across his chest, and he sees two of his men crumple as he staggers, stumbling almost onto their bodies. And they are so close now that he can nearly the Germans’ faces, as pale and scared and determined as their own must be.
He only briefly registers the sudden burst of rifle fire coming from behind his back, only briefly registers the shock on the soldiers’ faces before ten and thirteen and fifteen of them grapple and fall. The rest of them scarper, before Francis, blinking, hazy, can even count them, to the yells of Les Anglais! ricocheting from all around him.
And yes, right there, heaving his way up from the left trench and into the no man’s land, leading the head of an armed garrison, Arthur, with a long gun in one hand, and something dark and dried on his features. He is not quite smirking, but there is an odd grace to every step he takes that Francis recognizes; the enticing swing of each step and the tilt of the head, the cock of the gun, as though some invisible ship’s deck was humming underneath him. He does not even realize he’s fallen to his knees into the mud until Arthur stares down at him, unsmiling, and then leans in and grabs his wrist to help him roughly up.
“Can’t take care of yourself, can you,” Arthur says sharply, fingers catching on the bloody mess that seeps into the front of Francis’ uniform vest.
Francis blinks, still hazy. He wants to say, Bonsoir, Arthur, I was expecting you, and flirt until their brains explode. He wants to bite down into that bloodied mouth.
six.
They do not benefit from proper lodgings until a little town near Lille, whole half-lit hotel has clean rooms and cool, smooth sheets. He tumbles Arthur down into them - nails digging in soft skin just so to have Arthur hissing with discomfort, and kicking up a thigh between his own - and kisses him directly into heady, open-mouthed slickness. It's a hard, frantic grasp for clothes and skin, legs tangling, hands everywhere: Francis' lifting one of Arthur's thighs against his hipbone to rock against him harder, Arthur's caught in his hair, fingernails scraping sharply against the sides and back of his neck. His cock is a hard, taut line against Francis'.
They're over within the minute, with too much frustration between them over the last few weeks to last longer, and just enough good sense, and timing, to do away with whatever much clothing they can. Arthur's teeth bite down against the thick tendon on the side of his neck, and Francis snarls helplessly, thrusting deliberately into Arthur's groin for all of thirty seconds before their rhythm slips into something frantic and hurried, thighs tightening, catching each other's breaths in their mouths.
Arthur comes like a wave crashing, utterly mute, hips shifting and thrusting up, and Francis, fascinated, can only swallow a whimper and stare: Arthur's eyes are smoky green and impossibly wide, his mouth clamped shut, chest heaving so fast he might just break. It is nothing Francis has never seen before, hundreds of times before, but the dip of Arthur's lips, their slight twists and turns, and the hotel light shadowing his sex-dark hair, make the dark, coiling knot into his gut pool lower and then flood.
“Oh, my dear,” he whispers brokenly, and comes and comes and comes.
seven.
“Right,” Arthur says after two hours of tracing hipbones and thighs with hand and mouth and cock. “Right,” and pads out of bed on unsteady legs, wobbling uncertainly across the room to grab at his duffel. “Fuuuck. Right, so this,” and returns to drop a square, flat bottle of brandy cold between Francis’ shoulderblades. And Francis says,
“Oh,”
in a breathy, awed sort of way, and the first taste, stolen from across Arthur’s lips, makes him see fucking stars.
The alcohol is like gold in his mouth and in his throat, intricate and complicated, alien, here. (When he closes his eyes he sees Cambridge, surprisingly, and the tweed of Arthur’s suit, tiding light at the window, one evening in late August, 1906. He sees it-everything at once, half-clear but perfect, like the old, odd Exhibition photographs, tainted with sunset colours.) He pawprints brandy-sticky-orange fingerprints on Arthur’s cheek, jaw, chin, nose, everywhere. And then he sleeps. Arthur curls his fingers in the fringed blanket, pushing his mouth against dark hair.
eight.
“Very well,” Francis says, against the mouth of a liquor bottle. The mouthful scorches down his throat. “Do it.”
Arthur grunts, picks up Francis’ arm with sharp, jerky movements, and snaps his shoulder backwards. Francis’ eyes burn white, and he stumbles forward blindly with a mute yell of pain, into Arthur: his free hand gripping his elbow so tight its fingers look like bones.
“Okay,” Arthur says purposefully, breathing as though he’s just run a marathon. “Okay.” His thumb presses down onto the soft skin of Francis’ inner wrist; it sends a flood of blood rushing up to Francis’ brain. The taste of Arthur’s sweat under his lips and Arthur’s arm coiled like a vice around his hips all shut him up, wrap him up, expose him fully to the sensation of his throbbing wrist, and he only gradually becomes aware of everything else: a dozen soldiers around them, the rickety-rat-rat of the rifles a few yards behind, the officer’s distressed orders as they prepare to move out of the trench and set off towards the east. The sky looks like an infected wound.
“Alright, then?” Arthur asks, into his hair, and tightly.
Francis nods, bites a kiss down on his collarbone, and straightens, wincing. “Merde. Putain de guerre.”
“Whiner,” Arthur shots back absently, and tosses a roll of gauze at his head.
nine.
Dunkirk feels like a blood clot.
ten.
By the end of the day the entire bay is up in flames. The gas has come down three hours ago, and the city, the sky, and the sea are lit up by hundreds of torches and lanterns and fires on land, and the hundred electric glows on board of hundreds of boats, flocking in on the dark water - vessels and ferries and dinghies and rundown crafts, each swallowing as many men as possible before giving way to another. Arthur, posted on the side of the deck, wrapped up in a dark cloak, carrying a lantern, looks as though out of the nineteenth century.
“Bougez pas,” he orders to his fifty-odd men grouped at his back, half-drenched and defiant. Arthur's head snaps up at the sound of French, and his mouth twists into a dark, grim expression; he grabs Francis' arm tightly, squeezing, not caring any for Francis' wince and soft murmur of pain as his shoulder wound throbs.
“Get on a boat, you asshole. You've taken way too long already.”
“There are over ten thousand French soldiers arriving in Dunkerque this very second, Angleterre, and many more in an hour,” Francis mutters, cutting a glance towards the old yacht that, closest to them, is gobbling up soldiers. “Your Navy, such as it is tonight, will not be able to take them all on.”
“I'm not leaving you here,” Arthur snaps. “To be massacred. I'm not.”
“I cannot leave my land, Arthur,” Francis snarls back. “Not when it is about to be mangled -“
“You can't stay here, either.” Two of Arthur's fingers dig into his inner wrist so hard Francis hisses. “Let me take you south, at least. The Germans haven't gone that far yet.”
Yet, Francis thinks, and, looking into Arthur's dark, tired face, he wonders when was the last time either of them has slept. They were separated fifty miles and two days from Dunkirk, left to reach town by their own means; Francis has not closed his eyes ever since, and neither, he believes, has Arthur. It seeps into his bones, the fatigue, at the base of his nape, behind his eyelids.
“Very well,” he murmurs. “I have fifty men directly under my orders here. Take us down to Cherbourg; we will make our way back to Paris from there.”
Arthur's fingers squeeze his wrist hard enough to reduce it to bone dust. Francis ignores this, shouts orders in French, and does not watch how dark the lantern light paints Arthur's hair and eyelashes across his cheeks, like black ink, or like blood.
eleven.
Pétain demands the armistice on the morning of June 17th, and it's not even a surprise. Francis, locked up in his shabby hotel room, sleeps with his face against the window, pressed to the cold glass, looking out westward. He wakes in late afternoon, head pounding and unexpected tears running down his cheeks.
twelve.
And then it’s out, out, into winter ’41: they dress him up with rich fabric, white coats, fur hats, turquoise ornaments, envelop him like a Russian doll; he visits the Opéra of Paris and the Comédie-Française, and the Eiffel Tower and the Opéra-Comique and the Champs-Élysées and the restaurants streaming with light and sweet cocktails, velvet-lined cars and voluptuous prostitutes, and Paris rots.
Paris rots in the lines at the corners of his eyes, the thrumming in his ears, the dislocated bones and strained muscles, in the thick layer of bile on his tongue. He wonders if those who wrench his mouth and thighs open can taste it there.
thirteen.
They leave him the bathroom - toilet and shower and scented soap and as much water as he wishes - because he must be clean. He snarls at his reflection when he steps in, the man in the mirror with the high cheekbones and lowered lashes, eyes blue and husky. He prefers to be naked as, hunched over the toilet bowl, he vomits his throat clean of all the fine treats they stuff him with (heady wines, spiced poultry, and sugary macaroons). He showers for the longest time, shuddering on the tiles as the water eventually runs freezing, and - almost - flinching from the fluffy white bathrobe hung on the towel rack: there was an evening in 1904 when he and Arthur were wrapped in it, drinking champagne and light off of each other’s skin.
It is a strange moment, like negative photography: the two images of the two bedrooms overlap, black lines crossing, greys melting into white, and then grey again - one over the other, suspended.
Then there is a gold line flickering under the door, and Francis shakes his head, shakes his hair free of water, and closes his eyes to the approaching thud of military boots.
fourteen.
And then they forget about him. The new government is implanting itself firmly in Vichy, somewhere down near his spleen, and he remains behind in Paris, flanked by half a dozen Nazi officers who after a week are more interested in visiting Pigalle’s maisons closes than in keeping an eye on him. He wanders around the streets, smoking his precious few Gauloises and counting down the increasing number of houses whose doors and windows have been shut down and barred. Once he helps a boy catch a rat for a stew.
It snows heavily that winter, the dark, thick snow that makes the streets greasy and slippery, and makes it almost impossible for the cars to drive through. The night comes unusually early, and the air is thick with humidity; in the few avenues that still have gas, the streetlamps make for huge, blurred glows of rainy, dirtied orange light. (Some say that it is not snow at all, but the ash that the wind blows onto them from burning London. Francis is not quite sure he believes that.)
fifteen.
He dissolves, at some point. He melts into the cracks between the damp cobbles of his streets, between the thick concrete of the pavement and the white-washed walls, into slippery-wet gutters, into Parisian rain. It washes him away, mud and soiled snow cleansing his body as he tides into the arms of men and women with sunken eyes and gnarled lips; he huddles with them, arms gathered, close together, bodies drinking in warmth and sweat and - yes, underneath the filthy clothes and the crusted dirt - and love.
sixteen.
They whisper. They hurry, scrabbling and grappling at stone and wood and metal, climbing like soft-pawed animals, hushed, murmur, whisper, whisper. They find creases and holes, gaps, fill them to the brim with sparks and future light; and scramble down, trailing wires behind them, entangling them in a vicious spider's web. They scatter, then, footfalls soft upon the dry leaves and firewood. They scatter, they regroup, and they wait.
The bridge explodes and it's like fireworks, in his chest.
seventeen.
It's five months before they manage to scrape up a working radio transmitter and another two before they come across the right frequency to break into with an old codename. The Catacombs are damp and cold in late October, and the slow fizzle from the speaker creates expectant background noise - loud enough to reverberate across the tight, dark walls - murmuring almost over and across the hushed voice of the man sitting at the dials. Francis would not even be able to hear it if he were not standing directly behind him.
“Et... voilà,” the radio says, screwing up a dial to concentrate the sizzling into one long, soft whine. He has rather amazing hands, this boy, working and moving through the air with the sharp knowledge of an amateur, spinning noise out of white, white silence. He is very, so very young, and reminds Francis a little of Mathieu. “Hier-“
“Who is this?” a harsh, jerky voice barks in rough, corrugated English that twists all the way down into Francis' gut. “This frequency is closed. Who. Is. This.”
“Ah,” the radio says, and blinks up at Francis -
“I will shut down this channel in exactly ten seconds if you do not tell me your name and code immediately -“ as they scramble to change places, Francis grabbing the microphone with shuddering fingers, “as well as how you managed to break into this frequency. Do you hear?”
Francis smiles. “Bonsoir, Arthur.”
(one, ii)
Francis is, in the minuscule, under-the-roofs bedroom, sprawled all over the bed (admittedly changed to a better one, as is most of the furniture) - limbs kicked out, clothes everywhere; his face is pushing, sullenly, into the cushions, one arm slung over mussed blond, and Arthur’s attention is drawn inexorably to the pale, flushed skin - one nervous hand dangling down to the side, the other hidden, folded into ribs, and bare feet, a triangle of collarbone under the askew shirt. There are shoes astray on the rug, and cufflinks on the parquet where Arthur picks them.
He reaches out for the hand and touches bone-like wrist, white and smooth, turns it, touches the soft, inner skin with the pad of his thumb. Francis shivers all over, and Arthur feels it, too, down to his bones.
“Francis,” he says, mouth catching on a lock of hair; and then, changing his mind, he climbs up and straddles the small of his back, splays his hands, palms, the tip of his fingers, over the messy gold across his nape. Francis arcs his neck into the caress, purrs. His clothes are beautiful and fine, his shirt a blue Arthur remembers from a package Matthew sent a few days ago, and he derives an odd pleasure from cresting waves onto the sea-smooth fabric, from rippling it across Francis’ shoulders and down his spine.
He slides his fingers down, under the hem, tips brushing the sides of Francis’ waist: it makes the shirt tide up, a little, just high enough to expose a few inches of soft, hidden skin, just enough to make Francis tremble and sigh, and bury himself deeper into the cushions. Arthur kisses that, too.
He works at Francis’ back - works out the knots and tense muscles under his skin, all the little imperfections, and Francis melts into his hands, onto the couch, with little sighs and whimpers and ’ah, oui…’s. And Arthur almost sobs, almost, because this is beautiful, this: Francis’ quiet sounds, faint noises of purring pleasure, and the long, wiry body humming under his palms, the shake of the head like a gold blur - god, so fucking beautiful, he thinks, growling, bloody gorgeous, just there.
“Bloody idiot,” he murmurs, and Francis turns his head, smiles blue at him underneath the arch of his arm. Arthur leans down to taste that smile with the sun in his eyes.
fin.
End Notes: These are the translations and historical notes I put in on the meme; I figured they were just as necessary here.
Translations:
Tu m’adores: You adore me.
Putain de guerre: Fucking war.
Bougez pas: Don’t move.
Dunkerque is the French name for Dunkirk.
Maison close: a brothel.
Et… voilà. (…) Hier…: And… there you go. (…) Yesterday…
Bonsoir: Good evening.
Historical Notes:
During WWI and the beginning of WWII, French propaganda pictured Germans as having devils’ tails and foxes ears and eyes (and vice-versa). According to a document in my old high school history textbook, in 1940, when France was occupied, some French people expressed their astonishment at soldiers looking ‘just like human beings’. (Though it is more likely that those were ironical remarks rather than genuine surprise.)
Lille is a town in Northern France, close to both Dunkirk and the front lines.
The evacuation of the British soldiers from French land began on the 26th of May, 1940 at Dunkirk, and lasted nine days. A flotilla of 400 Navy ships was aided from the 27th onwards by about 700 civilian vessels, and by the time Dunkirk surrendered to German attacks on the 4th of June, about 186,000 British soldiers and 125,000 French (and other Allies) had been evacuated. About 40,000 French soldiers were captured, though, and most of those who had been evacuated were shipped back to Cherbourg to continue the fight.
On June 17th, 1940, the General Pétain announced over the radio that he would have to submit to signing an armistice with the German army the very evening. This was not merely a military capitulation, which might have led to possibilities of negotiations (not very likely, though), but a full-out political armistice, which meant France was entirely subjected to Hitler’s decisions. The following day, the General de Gaulle called out to the French people over the BBC waves, declaring that France ‘was not alone’ and that movements of Resistance were to be set into place against the soon-to-be Vichy government.
Such movements became more and more obvious as the war wore on and the wind turned back against the Nazis. The Free French’s most prominent victory was the liberation of Paris in August 1944, although they were (obviously) helped in this by the British, American and Canadian troops that had been flooding in since D-Day.
After the war, France’s economy was extremely down, and it wasn’t till 1947 and the setting into place of the Marshall Plan by the USA that it began to pick up again-and the social mood of its population along with it.