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Blanket curled beneath his arm, Arthur trudged across the soft sands, his Oxfords sinking with each step. A full suit complete with leather dress shoes was, perhaps, a poor choice for a seaside picnic date; but he had ulterior motives for asking Francis out this afternoon. Burning a hole into his pocket was a small velvet box, reminding him of its presence with every step he took. Twice now this question had spelt ruin for their relationship, regardless of which one of them had taken the initiative, and anxiety questioned his sanity for daring to risk the tentative peace they had clawed back by asking for a third time.
But when he saw Francis, skipping ahead on a path unmarked by sight yet known to them both by heart, it felt like millennia folded in on themselves and everything became clear. In the shimmer of sunlight and sea air, it's like he could see them all - every Francis he'd ever known scattered across the ages, walking along this same trail. The lover, the diplomat, the soldier, the revolutionary, the corsair, the knight, the princess, and the boy; each one pausing to glance back at him with that same knowing glint in their eyes, as if every lifetime they'd lived had been leading them here.
Golden-brown hair fluttered in the wind, catching the sunlight until it glowed like a halo. Francis stood waiting at the base of the cape, one hand shading his eyes as he smiled at Arthur. "Lay the blanket out here, mon petit lapin6," He suggested, gesturing towards a dry patch of smooth sand. "We will have the perfect view of your dreary little island, so you don't get too home-sick, mm?"
Rolling his eyes, Arthur obliged, shaking the blanket out twice before letting it fall neatly to the ground. "Dreary, is it?" He prodded back, dropping down to settle upon the blanket and tug on his shoelaces. "You say that now, but you still end up there every chance you get. You know you'd miss it if you couldn't see it, love."
"Miss it?" Francis laughed merrily, joining Arthur on the blanket and placing the basket between them. "Perhaps," He continued wistfully, gaze drifting towards Dover as he unlaced his own shoes. "Angleterre has been a fixture of my life for almost as long as I can remember. It is hard to imagine a life without it." Then, with a coy tilt of his head and a slight, almost mischievous glance to the side. "But, whether I would miss it? That is another question. It was never the island itself that I loved, you know."
How Francis could admit such mushy and sentimental things without baulking, he could never understand. Merely on the receiving end of the compliment and already Arthur felt that his face was aflame. Was thinking that he could handle this - a genuinely heartfelt proposal and not one borne of obligation to his Prime Minister - foolhardy? When he had told his brothers of his plans, Alasdair had laughed at him, Dylan had encouraged him7, Sean had supported him, and Seamus had simply raised an eyebrow.
Unaware of Arthur's inner turmoil, Francis had already unpacked the wicker basket with a flourish. "Voilà!" He announced proudly, gesturing to the spread before them. Warmth radiated from the golden quiche lorraine that sat perched upon a proper plate, accompanied by a bowl filled with ripened berries. A bottle of Sancerre leaned against the basket beside a pair of crystal wine glasses and a pristine dessert box tied neatly with a green ribbon. "You were mon bon garçon8 today, so for dessert, I have made Earl Grey macarons, as promised."
Arthur groaned, heat flooding his cheeks as he kicked his shoes and socks off, placing the Oxfords on diagonal corners of the blanket to pin it in place. "Don't call me that," He snapped, shooting Francis an incredulous look. "I'm nearly two thousand years old, for Christ's sake. I'm hardly a boy, git."
That earned him another bout of giggles as Francis uncorked the Sancerre, the soft pop echoing across the quiet beach. "Oui, I know that well, mon amour. That wild little boy I once knew…he has grown into a fine man indeed." Francis hummed as he poured the pale wine into both glasses, handing one to Arthur with an easy smile. "Santé, mon bon monsieur9," He teased with a wink, raising his glass in a small toast before taking a sip.
Arthur accepted both the glass and compliment, raising it in answer and imbibing. Crisp vintage spilled over his tongue, sharp citrus notes cutting through his palate. The wine tasted the way the sea smelled on a clear morning, as if Francis had somehow bottled the very essence of this coastline; all salt spray and chalk cliffs and endless horizon. "I can't say wine is my favourite drink - far too poncy for my liking. But…I dare say, you've chosen well with this one," He admitted, swirling his glass and watching the pale gold liquid spiral.
"Mmm. Sancerre always reminds me of Pas-de-Calais," Francis confessed, his gaze returning to the lapping waves and cliffs in the distance. The sunlight illuminated the handsome curve of his face, his eyes softening with a look that seemed to reach across time. "I used to come here often during the first lockdown, you know. The beaches were always empty then - no tourists, no ferries, not even the hum of traffic behind the dunes. Just me, a bottle of Sancerre, and that view." He nodded towards the faint silver line of Dover on the horizon. "I would sit here and raise a glass to you, mon cher. To the cliffs, to the island, to the stubborn man who remained just out of reach."
Guilt twisted in Arthur's chest as his eyes remained on Francis and the sentimental expression that had struck him. If he hadn't caught the train that afternoon, he could have remained in the Calais villa alongside his lover. That year could have been spent together, rather than wallowing in lonely (and admittedly, drunken) misery. Setting his glass down carefully upon the blanket, the weight of Francis' words settled heavily in his chest. "Francis…I'm sorry," He apologised softly. "I should have stayed. Should have caught the last train back that night instead of getting caught up in bloody meetings and paperwork."
"Non, mon cœur," Francis answered gently, reaching to cover Arthur's hand with his own. "You couldn't have known how quickly everything would change. Besides," He smiled as he squeezed Arthur's fingers, "what matters is that we're here now, together."
Arthur turned his hand palm-up beneath Francis', their fingers intertwining naturally. "Still. A year is quite some time to spend toasting empty horizons."
"Ah, but it wasn't empty," Francis countered. "You were there, even if I couldn't see you. You know...I even had a glass of it before coming to see you that day."
When Arthur looked at him with a thick eyebrow raised in confusion, Francis tilted his head and a sparkle gleamed in his eye. “Do you remember the Chunnel opening? 1994?”
It took a moment for the memory to properly sink in but when it did, Arthur’s lips quickly turned into a scowl. "Oh, for fuck's sake. Don't remind me of that nonsense."
"Hahaha! Oh, but it was so sweet," Francis grinned, his blinding smile admittedly suiting him far better than the near-melancholy that had taken hold of him earlier. "It was like a story, mon amour. Both of us, so eager to surprise the other, taking the very first passenger trains…"
"…Only to arrive at empty houses like a pair of idiots," Arthur finished, shaking his head dismissively but unable to suppress his own smile at the memory.
"I thought I was being so clever. The tunnel had just opened, and I thought - what a romantic gesture! I'll surprise my handsome Englishman by taking the very first passenger service I could book."
"Yes, yes. And I had the exact same brilliant idea. Spent the entire journey from Dover planning what I'd say when I knocked on your door," Arthur said dryly.
"When you called me, I had so many complaints prepared but- hahaha oh! It all went out the window so fast when I heard about what you'd done, mon chéri," Francis snickered. "How could I ever be upset when I heard of your plight?"
"Your concierge was not pleased to see me," Arthur grumbled in return, rolling his eyes as he leaned back. "If I hadn't left right after, I fear that I'd be calling you from a Parisian prison."
"You're just lucky that I know where to find your spare key, mon petit lapin. Your neighbour was similarly unpleased to see me pacing across your stoop."
"Oh, I know. I had many a missed call from Mrs. Henderson. She told me that she nearly called the police on the 'suspicious foreign gentleman' that was loitering on my property," Arthur chuckled, despite himself.
Releasing Francis' hand with a parting squeeze, he picked his own glass up once more and took a swig, the wine settling warm and golden in his chest like captured sunshine. Frayed nerves from his earlier anxiety had already melted away beneath Francis' influence. How did Francis always know? It was as if he could sense, with unerring precision, the exact moment when Arthur's thoughts had begun to spiral; like he possessed some innate compass that pointed not north, but towards Arthur's own heart.
Placing his now empty glass onto the blanket, Francis lay down with a contented sigh, one arm behind his head while the other plucked a couple of raspberries from the bowl. The picture of peace, he was, with berry juice now staining his lips. This man bore little resemblance to the Francis that he had found off the beaches of Normandy, all wretched and broken almost beyond repair.
"Once upon a time, I thought I'd never see you like this again," Arthur spoke suddenly, before he even realized it.
"Like what?" Francis asked, his head tilting to the side, golden hair falling down like a curtain, glowing as the sun backlit it.
"…Happy," Arthur admitted. "Content."
"And why ever would you think that?" Francis questioned, though the glint in his eyes betrayed that he already knew what Arthur spoke of.
"Just…when I saw you, after Normandy, it…" Arthur began, his voice thin as it threatened to choke up from the weight of the memory. "…it felt different. To any other moment in our wrought history. Throughout millennia, I don't think I have ever seen you so…so…" Trailing off for a moment, another hearty gulp from his glass was required before he regained the strength to finish. "…so broken."
"Oui, well…it was a first for both of us, then," Francis sighed with a world-weary weight. "…even I didn't think that I would ever…come back...from that."
The burden of their experience sat heavily in the air between them. Guilt had a habit of burrowing itself deep within Arthur - a consequence that was well-deserved, after all that he had been and done - but none quite so infuriating as this. He had not experienced such helplessness since…since Rome; when he was little more than a child. Beneath the enraging might of the Axis Powers, squashed between the humiliation of pleading for the support of who was once his charge and the shame of dragging each of his colonies through utter hell, Francis was…a necessary, though unwanted, sacrifice.
"I'm sorry, Francis," Arthur blurted out on instinct, his hands on his thighs, gripping the fabric of his pants so hard that his knuckles turned white. "For all of it. For Dunkirk, for- Christ, for Mers-el-Kébir, for all the bombs we dropped on your cities in hopes of freeing them, for every month that I made you wait-"
A finger pressed against his lips, gentle yet insistent.
"Arthur," Francis still smiled up at him, his eyes filled with more overwhelming affection than Arthur could ever have hoped to deserve. "You don't need to apologise. I forgave you decades ago."
The finger against his lips shifted, Francis' hand cupping Arthur's cheek with a gentle and tender reverence. "You've always carried more shame than you needed to. It's not your fault, mon soleil10. Not all of it." He paused for a moment, seeming intent on his expression of affection towards his dearest enemy than anything else. "Do you know what kept me sane? The thoughts that kept me closer to sanity, throughout all the crises I faced at the hand of the Vichy?"
Arthur shook his head, clueless to whatever it was that Francis was getting at.
"You, ma colombe11," Francis answered with such clear assuredness that it left Arthur entirely breathless. "I thought of you. The look of unmasked fondness on your face in the aftermath of the Entente Cordiale, the poetry that accompanied your bouquets in the late 19th century - the way in which you have always found yourself entwined with me. No matter what is happening in the world, what has always brought me comfort is the way in which you have always wriggled your way into my life. I…don't know what I would be without you, at this point. France would not be the France that it is today, without the incessant meddling of Angleterre. And…I, Francis, would…not be the Francis that I am today, without mon très cher12 Arthur."
"And England would not be England without the constant annoyance of France," Arthur half-laughed, more from fondness than true distaste, as he fought the threat of affectionate tears that threatened to overtake. "The only other time that I feared losing you was…"
"…Napoleon," Francis finished as he leaned forward to grasp the bottle of Sancerre, pouring the wine into both of their glasses. "But you saved me from myself, mon Angleterre. Again."
Gladly grasping his re-filled glass, he raised it to clink against Francis', before taking a few hearty sips. "I don't know if I would call it saving…" Arthur responded. "…I just hope that you know that…I didn't find any enjoyment in it. Not even back then."
"Mmm…" Francis hummed, lips ghosting over the rim of his glass. "I know. The expression on your face is etched into my memory forever, mon cœur. You had not looked at me in such a way since I left our home in the mid-1700's."
Left was a generous word for what had happened between the two of them after the Anglo-French alliance fizzled into dust. For decades, they had shared a house on the edge of the Northern wilderness in the Americas; timber-framed, clapboard-sided, with a chimney that smoked when the chill blew too strong and a kitchen that always smelled of something delicious. Though they'd started off with separate bedrooms, a nasty cold of Alfred's and a bout of nightmares for Matthew had eventually brought them all together, a true facsimile of a human family. Out of the millennia he had lived before or the centuries he had lived since, nothing could compare to the peace that he had felt during those nights; when Matthew's half-silent breaths mingled with Alfred's rumbling snores in the cool evening air, as Francis burrowed deep into his arms.
"You…you told me back then that you loved me," Arthur mumbled, his eyes sliding shut from the memory of a younger Francis illuminated by the firelight, affections slipping from his lips with an ease that had caused Arthur to clam up instinctively. "I didn't say it back. I'm sor-"
Francis cut him off again before he could finish the words with an insistent finger pressed to his mouth. "Chut. You do not need to give me any more apologies, Arthur. You have given enough of them to me. Save your sorries for those that still deserve them."
When Arthur's eyes fluttered open again, Francis looked resplendent. His head was haloed by the sun, its rays tangled in the loose gold of his hair until Arthur couldn't tell where the warmth of the star ended and Francis began. The finger on his lips slid down to trace against his jawline, thumb brushing affectionately against his cheek.
"Besides, you had already told me that you loved me in all but words before then," Francis smiled slyly and the sinking pit in Arthur's stomach could already tell what it was that he was speaking of. "Need I remind you of your poetry from your renaissance period? His hair's not spun gold, despite what he's heard?"
Instantly, Arthur's cheeks flushed red as he was reminded of the ancient prose he had written in a spectacular fit of yearning. "You weren't supposed to have received that one," He complained, though he still leaned into the hand that cradled his cheek so reverently. "But that damned secretary of mine was far too content with meddling in my personal affairs."
"Well," Francis snickered, the sound more pleasing than music, "I do recall that you were quite pleased with the outcome of said poem reaching my ears." A wink preceded a delicate kiss that was pressed to his lips, the gentleness of the gesture causing Arthur's brow to unfurl.
When they parted, Arthur’s gaze lingered on those berry-stained lips, the velvet box pressing more insistently against his thigh as he leaned back onto one hand.
“Forgive me. It’s just hard to get used to…this.” Arthur motioned vaguely between them at the perfect yet impossible domesticity of it all. “You and I. Sitting here like a pair of normal people having a picnic. When I think about what we’ve done to each other-”
“Oui,” Francis agreed as his lips tightened. “We have not always been gentle with one another, have we?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
A silence stretched between them, filled only with the hush of waves against the shore and the distant cry of gulls wheeling above the chalk. Arthur’s mind drifted towards the ugliest century of them all - not a single memory but a cascade of them, each one sharp-edged and rust-coloured. More than a hundred years of putting blades in each other’s bodies. A fluency in murder that only the two of them shared.
“How many times, do you think?” Arthur asked, not needing to clarify.
Francis exhaled slowly. “I stopped counting after the siege of Orléans.”
“I didn’t,” Arthur admitted, his mouth twisting. “I kept a tally for a while. In the margins of a ledger, like it was revenue owed. As though there was a number that would balance the account.” He shook his head. “There wasn’t.”
“Non,” Francis agreed quietly. “There never could be.”
By the end of it, they had known the precise sound the other made when steel found lung. The exact expression each wore when the light left their eyes. Francis had been the first to cross that line - the first to look at Arthur across a battlefield and choose the blade over the hand. And Arthur, remade by then through the centuries after the Normans, had returned the favour with interest. Crécy. Poitiers. Agincourt. Each name a scar worn so deep it had become indistinguishable from bone.
“The last time was Waterloo,” Francis offered, as if reading his thoughts. “1815. After that…”
“After that, we stopped.”
“We stopped,” Francis echoed. A faint, wondering smile touched his lips. “And the world did not end.”
“No,” Arthur answered. “It didn’t.”
The breeze shifted, carrying the sharp mineral scent of chalk from the cliffs. Francis’ hand inched across the blanket to cover his and Arthur found himself entwining their fingers, gripping onto them tight.
“What kills me,” Arthur said next, the word bitter on his tongue for how literally they had both meant it once, “is wondering whether it had to happen like that at all. Any of it.” His thumb pressed against Francis’ knuckle. “Do you remember Hastings?”
“That is not a memory one forgets, mon cœur.”
Atop his destrier, Francis had been a vision of perfection in his hauberk and gambeson13, though Arthur had still lamented how garlands and flowers suited him best. When he fell, an English spearman driving the point of his weapon deep into the flank of his horse, time seemed to stop around them as the clanging of metal faded into a distant drone. There had been a moment - a singular moment during which his hand had tightened around the handle of his blade, the knowledge that he alone could turn the tide of battle if he could just slit the soft neck upon which golden hair still curled. And yet he didn’t. He couldn’t. He had abandoned both sword and country in favour of the heart and had wound up bleeding to death in Francis’ arms as a reward.
Lifting Francis’ hand, he brought it to his lips and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “I’d do it again,” Arthur admitted against his skin. “Even though I convinced myself that I wouldn’t in the years that followed…and even knowing what came after, I’d still drop my sword and run to your side. Every time.”
When Arthur’s gaze rose to Francis’ face again, those ocean-eyes were brimming with unshed tears, water rippling across perfect blues. “I know,” Francis exhaled, his voice strained. “That is what makes it so unbearable. Because I was not so merciful in return.”
“You were, in the end. Eventually.” He set their joined hands down between them on the blanket.
“And now we’re here,” Francis sighed, shifting closer and resting his head on Arthur’s bony shoulder.
“And now we’re here.”
They sat like that for a while - Francis’ head warm against his shoulder, the Sancerre nearly finished - as the afternoon sun glistened off the rolling waves of the tide. The relative peacefulness of their lives now was one that he could have only ever dreamed of in the sweet warmth of their colonial home, in the quiet contemplation of the Lindisfarne gardens, beneath the striking glow of the Mediterranean sun.
“If only that wild little boy in the peristylium14 could have seen you now,” Francis murmured as his head turned, nose burying into the crook of Arthur’s neck. “I still remember it all. The way the air smelt, how the grass stained, the sweetness of the figs.”
“Then I suppose you answered your own question,” Arthur hummed, his own head tilting until his cheek nuzzled against the top of Francis’ head. “And Antonio was right. The land remembers.”
“Je penserai à toi pour toujours, Britannia15,” Francis whispered, the words barely audible as they tickled against Arthur’s skin, eliciting goosebumps with the very sentence that had been engraved into his heart ever since their lips had met for the first time.
Arthur closed his eyes and let the truth of all these years wash over him, a final recognition of that something once unnameable that had filled the hollow cavern of his chest from the moment that he’d laid eyes on Galia. He had known it then, when he awoke in the gardens with his hair twisted into a hundred tiny braids and heard Francis’ genuine laughter break through years of practiced giggles. He had known it at Hastings, when his hand grew slack around the handle of his sword as Francis’ eyes opened and he saw the majesty of the sea that stretched between Calais and Dover. He had known it through a hundred and sixteen years of war, through every blade and every battlefield, no matter how desperately he hoped that spilling Francis’ blood could somehow wash his heart clean of the love that stubbornly lingered. He had known it in the domestic warmth of the colonial kitchen, stepping indoors from the garden with dirt on his hands to hear Francis’ melodic voice singing ditties to their children as he baked. He had known it at Waterloo when the killing finally stopped, in the trenches when they clung to one another in terror as shells screamed overhead, on the Chunnel uninvited with a bouquet in his hands and unpracticed words muddled in his head. Two millennia of stubbornness. Two millennia of wars and treaties and oceans crossed and uncrossed, of brothers wounded, of nations burned, of words bitten back and chances squandered.
The velvet box was still warm in his pocket, impossibly heavy as Arthur thought: enough. Enough wasted years. Enough silence.
“Come with me,” Arthur spoke before he had even fully formed the thought in his mind. Finishing the remaining wine in his glass with one swig, he settled it into the sand, before disentangling their hands with a parting squeeze and standing.
Francis blinked up at him, wine glass still loosely cradled in his fingers with an eyebrow raised curiously. “Quoi?16”
“The water. Just come with me,” Arthur answered, voice as taut as a bowstring and his throat dry as he held out his hand. “Just- trust me. Please.”
Something about his request, perhaps the slight tremble in his fingers or the underlying nerves present in his tone, cut through Francis’ bemusement because the teasing retort that had already begun to form on his lips dissolved into silence. Setting his glass carefully down upon the blanket, he took Arthur’s hand and rose.
They crossed the sand without speaking, bare feet pressing crescents into the shore that the tide would later erase within minutes. Arthur’s fingers gripped tight around Francis’, as though loosening his grip might allow two thousand years of momentum to wash away alongside their footprints.
Salt water struck his toes first - channel-cold and sharp enough to sting - but Arthur didn’t slow. Each step carried them deeper until the surf swirled around their calves, Arthur’s suit trousers drinking the water greedily as the fine wool darkened to near-black and it clung to his shins. Beside him, Francis sucked a breath in through his teeth as his own linen pants grew soaked, but he showed no interest in retreating and matched his pace without question or hesitation.
When the water reached their knees, Arthur stopped. He turned to face Francis.
The afternoon sun blazed high and merciless above them, a welcome contrast to the chilled sapphire blue of the Channel that shone more radiantly than any gem could. Behind Francis, the chalk face of Cap Blanc-Nez rose pale and stark against the blindingly picturesque clear sky; the whole of France at his shoulders like the land itself had come to bear witness. And Arthur knew that he must have cut a mirror image - Dover’s white cliffs ghosting the distant horizon at his own back, the two men framed by their nations yet standing in the narrow stretch of water that belonged to them both.
“Arthur, your suit is going to be-”
“I had a speech,” Arthur interrupted, his voice cracking as he fought the urge to hide his face away amidst the oncoming vulnerability of his words. “Fourteen drafts. Written on the train from Dover. I’ve written legislature with less trouble.”
Wind whipped golden-brown strands across Francis’ cheeks, catching in the dampness that had already begun to gather there, as Arthur realized with a pang to the heart, that Francis was crying. Not sobbing theatrically, nor breaking into pieces, just a quiet and steady spill of tears as though some part of him understood what was happening before Arthur had even opened his mouth.
“Arthur,” Francis gasped, and the shape of his name sounded better coming from those lips than it ever had before. “Are you-”
“I am trying to, if you would let me finish a bloody sentence for once in two thousand years.”
A laugh broke out of Francis - wet, startled, involuntary - and Arthur seized on the sound of it, clutching it tight in his chest where it burned alongside every other genuine laugh of Francis’ that he’d ever hoarded.
Shaking hands reached into his pocket, the box warm and small against his palm. He fumbled with the clasp once, twice - fingers trembling so violently that the surf nearly swallowed it whole - before it snapped open with a quiet click that cut clean through the crash of waves.
And then he knelt.
The Channel soaked through his trousers instantly, cold enough to make his teeth ache, salt water lapping against his thighs as a swell rolled past and retreated. His suit was ruined. But he couldn’t have cared less. Not when Francis was standing above him with both hands pressed to his mouth, tears falling freely now, those ocean-blue eyes so wide and bright that Arthur could barely breathe for the sight of them. At Hastings, squinting across a battlefield filled with blood and mud, he had looked at those eyes and thought he’d seen the sea - the whole stretch of water that flowed between Calais and Dover, vast and uncrossable, the distance that defined them. He had been wrong. He could see that now. What lived in Francis’ eyes was not the Channel, but the sky itself; every shade the heavens had ever worn reflected back at him - the pale cerulean of a Roman afternoon, the dappled blue-grey of an overcast London morning, the dazzling and unbroken cyan that stretched above and connected them now.
“I’m not doing this as England,” Arthur began, the nerves in his voice conversely evening out despite the freezing water drenching his suit. “This isn’t an alliance. Or a treaty or an accord or any other reason with a hidden agenda or motive.”
Another wave nudged past his hip and he steadied himself, ring box held above the water.
“I’m asking you this as Arthur. Just Arthur. The wild little boy who scratched your cheeks and pulled your hair and didn’t have a single word for what he felt because no one had ever taught him what it meant.” His throat had dried up, but the words still flowed, unable to keep from spilling out now that he had begun. “The same boy who kept your ribbon on his bedside table for centuries because it was the only proof he had that you were real. Who couldn’t kill you at Hastings - who dropped his sword and ran to you across a battlefield like the worst soldier in the history of England because you were lying in the mud and nothing, nothing mattered more than reaching you.”
Francis made a sound behind his hands, inelegant but raw and real, and Arthur felt his own eyes burn.
“I should have said it at Tamworth, when you held the ribbon in your hands and asked me if I’d dreamed of the cypress trees too. I should have said it in the Americas, when you told me that you loved me by the firelight and I couldn’t make the words come out. I should have said it a thousand times across a thousand years and the fact that I didn’t will always be one of my greatest regrets.”
The ring caught in the afternoon sun - a simple band of white gold cradling a single cabochon of blue john, its banded ribbons of deep violet and pale amber-gold swirling through one another. Derbyshire stone, English earth - a piece of his own land, his own heart, polished smooth and set low and prostrated openly before Francis.
“You asked me once, under cypress trees, whether I would think of you when I went back to my kingdom of mud and mist.” He could taste the words that preceded their first kiss - the faint sweetness of stolen figs and the salt of shared tears - as he spoke them. “And Francis, I need you to know that my answer is the same. Of course I did. You’re impossible to forget.”
The surf tugged at his knees as salt - sea or tears, he could not tell - stung his lips.
“Francis Bonnefoy,” Arthur breathed, his heart stuttering to a stop within his chest. “Will you marry me?”
Francis’ hands dropped from his mouth. For one terrible, suspended moment, he said nothing - just stood there in the shining water with tears streaming down his face and the whole of France at his back, and Arthur felt the channel sway beneath his knees as his strength ebbed away with each passing second.
Then, Francis laughed - a sound so full of joy that it burst at the seams.
“Oui,” Francis choked, tears and laughter tangling together until they were indistinguishable, delicately extending his hand out between them. “Oui, oui, oui - yes, you impossible, infuriating, beautiful man - yes.”
Arthur’s fingers trembled so badly that he nearly dropped the ring twice, the cabochon catching the light as it slid finally onto Francis’ slender finger, violet and gold complementing his lightly sun-kissed skin. A piece of England wrapped around France’s hand. The sight of it blurred behind the tears that Arthur couldn’t pretend weren’t falling.
And then, before Arthur could rise, before he could even close the ring box, Francis’ hands were on his face - palms against his jaw, fingers sliding into his hair - and he was being hauled upward out of the water and spun with a strength that belied those elegant hands.
Water arced from their legs in bright ribbons, the Channel scattering into diamonds around them as the world wheeled - sky and chalk and sea and sun blurring into a single canvas of white and blue and gold. Arthur clung to Francis’ shoulders and heard a sound tear from his own throat that he could scarcely recognize - too young, too free, too much like the laugh of a boy who had not yet learned to be afraid of joy.
When they stilled, foreheads pressed together and breathing hard, Arthur saw them - not one Francis scattered along the path this time, but all of them. Every iteration layered into the man whose arms still held him above the surf. The lover, the diplomat, the soldier, the revolutionary, the corsair, the knight, the princess, and the boy; each one gazing back at him with the expression that Arthur had spent twenty centuries mistaking for condescension when it had always, always been something genuine.
And in those eyes - for the first time in the long history of their entire lives - he could see Francis seeing him in return. The administrator, the general, the father, the conqueror, the pirate, the king, the savage, and the boy. Every scar, every compromise, every terrible and tender thing that he had ever been, held without flinching in the blue of Francis’ gaze.
It was more than just France seeing England, or England seeing France. It was Francis Bonnefoy seeing Arthur Kirkland and Arthur Kirkland seeing Francis Bonnefoy. Wholly, completely, and finally. The way that they should have seen one another across a sunlit garden two thousand years ago, when the boy with ribbons in his hair first saw the boy with dirt smeared across his chin.
Francis’ hand rose to his cheek, trembling and damp, the white-gold metal of his ring warm against Arthur’s skin as he traced the line of his jaw as though learning it for the first time. As though all the centuries of knowing him had been a rough sketch and only now, here, in the water that belonged to them both, could he finally see the finished thing.
“I love you, Arthur Kirkland,” Francis whispered and the perpetual knot inside Arthur's heart finally unwound.
Arthur turned his head and pressed his lips to Francis’ palm - to the ring, to the skin beneath it, to the pulse that beat there steady and ancient and sure - and whispered it back. “Je t'aime, Francis Bonnefoy.”
1. Sourcils = Eyebrows Back
2. Mon cœur = My Heart Back
3. Très mignon = Very cute Back
4. Quelle tragédie = What a tragedy Back
5. Merveilleux. See you then, ma moitié. Je t'aime = Marvelous. See you then, my other half. I love you Back
6. Mon petit lapin = My little rabbit Back
7. For those that have read the Making of England, Dylan here is Henri. I've been meaning to change his name in the main body of work. I initially used the name Henri as it was the name used in the server I was initially writing for, but Henri is not actually a Welsh name. Back
8. Mon bon garçon = My good boy Back
9. Santé, mon bon monsieur = Cheers, my good man/sir Back
10. Mon soleil = My sun Back
11. Ma colombe = My dove Back
12. Mon très cher = My dearest Back
13. Destrien = A Medieval Warhorse. Hauberk = Chainmail shirt. Gambeson = Padded defensive jacket worn under the chainmail Back
14. Peristylium = An open-air, colonnaded courtyard/garden Back
15. Je penserai à toi pour toujours, Britannia = I will think of you forever, Britannia.
Cheeky little callback to Chapter Four of The Making of England. Angleterre was not a word back then, because England didn't exist. I used Britannia, because I think that's probably what Romulus would have referred to Arthur as. Back
16. Quoi = What Back