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chance meetings

Summary:

Francis is an author with very little hope left in publishing his novel and Arthur is a publisher who drinks every night. By chance, they meet in a cafe one night, and a budding friendship develops. Could there be something more? Maybe if they'd stop bickering.

Notes:

This fic has been in progress since my junior year of high school and I'm like....I should probably post this at some point. It's not admittedly on par with my current writing, but the later chapters will be. Finishing this has been a dream of mine since I was 16 and I'm now 21. Comments are appreciated!

Chapter 1: when you pick up an englishman at a bar

Chapter Text

Love is blind. Love is forever. Love is painful. Love is hard. Love is forgiving. Love is everything.

In the end, love is as it always has been: vague.

Love is inevitably different things to different people and it has the power to destroy some and save others.

 

Arthur was never one for love. The ambiguous air that surrounded the concept always kept him at bay. He had liked and he had adored but he had never loved. It was a foreign notion that registered more with mainstream ideals than with his own life. And he was content. His job at the publishing company in town kept him busy, the articles, books, and poetry he read in accordance with his job kept him from boredom, and the company of alcohol in his den on late nights kept him from being lonely. Every morning he would get up, go through his morning routine, head off to work, come home, continue to work, and then retire to his bed. It was comfortable and it was stable. He liked it that way. In short, he thought he had no need for the idea of love.

Francis was always in the light of love. From the day he was born he was breaking hearts. Sometimes it was intentional, others…not so much. He had loved and he had lost but he never really cared. Everyone was a conquest and no one really mattered because they would never love him the way that he would them. Love was something coveted and secret to be showered on those who deserved it. He was restless. With a job at a local bakery, he was tied down and fretful. A pile of forgotten love letters from previous lovers awaited him at home and the affection of a current lover kept him from loneliness. Most mornings he would wake up to another person in bed with him. He would go to the kitchen and cook breakfast, watch them leave, and then head off to work. In the evenings, he would make his way back home after a short trip to a local bar and head straight for his bed (whether he had another person on his arm or not). He was anxious and he drowned in instability. It was terrifying. In summation, he thought that love was a problem to be solved.

They met one night when Arthur had run out of alcohol and decided to go to a local pub rather than a liquor store. Francis smiled that winning smile and marked him as his newest challenge when he saw Arthur downing glass after glass of whiskey. He’d sat beside him at the bar and bought him a drink and smiled. Arthur looked up at him and glared, but at least he’d taken the drink. They’d talked, bickered mostly, but in the end, Arthur had ended up on Francis’ arm. It was a regular day for Francis, on the edge of insanity. Francis woke to Arthur beside him, and went to make breakfast. A few minutes later, a dazed and confused Arthur had stumbled in, displaying an even angrier scowl than the one he had started out with last night.

“Who in the bloody hell are you and where the fuck am I?” He’d gotten dressed, and looked about as hung-over as one could get. Francis gestured to the table and placed a plate of crepes on it.

“I’m Francis and you’re in my apartment. Eat.” He placed his own plate of crepes on the table and sat, once again motioning toward the seat across from him.

“What the hell am I doing here?” Arthur sat down, rubbing his eyes.

“You accompanied me home last night, and I think the rest is explanatory.”

“This is why I stay at home.” Nevertheless, Arthur picked up the fork next to his plate and cautiously took a bite.

“So you don't end up in stranger's apartments, eating their food?”

“Exactly.”

It was silent the rest of the meal. Francis was never the curious one when it came to his one-night-stand's personal lives and Arthur, well, he just didn't want to be there. When they finished, Arthur left, and Francis continued the rest of his day as per usual. Nothing was out of the ordinary and everything was falling apart.

Francis was going to be late to work, but he didn't care, he hated his job anyway. If he didn't need the money, if he could support himself on just his writing, if he could live the way he wanted to, he wouldn't need this dead-end job. But those were just ifs and he'd gotten too many rejection letters to even justify having a strand of hope. The last publishing house he'd been to hadn't even looked at his manuscript, he was sure.

.Walking into the bakery, he could see his manager was ticked off just by the sight of him.

“Late again, Bonnefoy.” He tisked and headed back into his office, most likely to write Francis up for the second time. One more, and he'd be fired. Francis went into the back of the shop and put on his apron, the smell of baking bread surrounding him. Today was going to be a long day.

It had been a slow night, with only two customers coming in after three. His shift had ended five minutes ago but his boss was making him stay over ten minutes for being late. He wouldn't have minded if there were something to do. Without anything to keep his mind busy, it wandered, and without anything to keep his hands busy, they shook. Anxiety liked to wash over him during times like these, taking hold of his instability and doubts and pulling them out into the open. Hardly anything could stop them when they came out, wracking his brain and assaulting his thoughts. It had been an awful day if you took that into consideration. Francis was now sitting at the counter, fiddling with the hem of his apron to try to keep his hands busy and counting the spots in the pattern that ran across the bottom of it in an attempt to busy his mind. The shop bell rang as the door opened, presenting a customer. A very familiar customer.

Arthur walked up to the counter, his eyes focusing on the menu, though he knew what he wanted. He hadn't bothered to look in the direction of the counter-worker, it didn't really matter to him who served him. He'd run out of tea at home and didn't want to drive to the other side of town to get more, so he would have to settle for tea from a shop on his side of town. Human interaction was not his favorite thing in the world, but going without his evening cup of tea was worse than talking to other people. It had been a busy day and he needed something to calm him down, and he knew a nice cup of herbal tea would do the trick. It seemed the only tea they served, however, was black tea. Arthur considered getting back in his car and driving to another cafe, but he was too tired. So, black tea, caffeinated or not, would have to do. He turned toward the man attending the counter and he nearly dropped his wallet.

“Hello, Arthur.” Francis had never had one of his one-night-stand's come into the shop. It was either going to turn into an interesting night, or continue to be an awful one. The scowl that sprung onto the Englishman's face genuinely frightened Francis.

“Hello,” Arthur strained to make out his name tag, “Francis.”

“Well, this is a bit awkward. What can I get you?”

“Just a...cup of vanilla black tea.”

“Alright, it'll be a minute. I'll bring it to one of the tables.” The Frenchman twisted around, moving to make the tea. Arthur pulled off his coat, sat down at the table furthest away from the counter and vaguely remembered that he intended to get the cup of tea to go, but was too embarrassed to say anything now. There was a reason he never got drunk in public, and this was it. He always ended up going home with a stranger and then meeting them under some other circumstance later on, creating a very awkward situation. This situation was something he tried desperately to avoid, but it always ended up happening. Nothing could convince him that these meetings were coincidence, and he promptly avoided the shops and cafe's in which he met his one-night-stands afterward. In fact, there were currently ten coffee/tea shops he had stopped going to, to make sure he avoided the awkward glances and twitching smiles of someone with which he'd shared a drunken night.

Arthur was focused on the wood grain of the table when Francis brought his tea over. The Englishman didn't look up as Francis placed another mug on the table across from him. This was about to get really awkward and Arthur was going to regret not going home immediately after work.

“Aren't you supposed to be working?” Hopefully, the man would get yelled at by his boss and leave Arthur in peace.

“My shift's about over and there are no other customers. My boss left an hour ago, and I've already locked everything up.” The Frenchman took a sip of his drink, cupping his hands around the mug when he set it back down.

“Oh.” Arthur was content to sit in silence for the rest of the time he felt obligated to be there, but Francis apparently wasn't one for silence.

“What do you do? For work, I mean.”

“I'm an editor.” He didn't really want to have this conversation, he wanted to leave but his damned politeness kept him from doing so.

“An editor? That seems like a boring job.”

“Not as boring as being a cafe worker.”

“My job is eventful enough.”

“As is mine.” Arthur wanted to bring this to a close, but he was only halfway done with his tea. He contemplated abandoning it, or just gulping down the rest of it so he could leave.

“Read any interesting manuscripts today?”

“No, none were particularly interesting.”

“I'm guessing you're in non-fiction then.”

“No.” His eyebrow twitched. This man was coming to conclusions about him and Arthur couldn't possibly be more uncomfortable. Usually when people came to conclusions about him and assumed things about him, he ended up yelling at them and he was too tired to do that tonight.

“Any particular genre then?”

“No.”

“But not non-fiction, so definitely fiction.” Francis took another sip of his drink, smiling at Arthur, who was glaring into his mug, staying silent. “How do you become an editor?”

“I worked hard. Went to college. Learned things. Became an editor.”

“So the first time you applied to be an editor, you got the job?”

“No. The first twenty jobs I applied for rejected me or did not call me back. After about a year of doing odd jobs, I got hired at a publishing company as what basically was a secretary. I worked my way up from the bottom and dug out my own place in the company. Eventually, I was promoted to editor.” This was getting more irritating by the moment.

“How many years?”

“Why are you so interested in this?” Arthur was on the verge of snapping. This always happened and he always let it happen. It was better to get their initial curiosity out of the way, and have them realize that Arthur was someone that no one willingly called their friend.

“I've never met one of my one-night-stand's after they leave.”

“That's fortunate.” The Englishman took the last swig of his tea and stood, pulling on his coat. “I'll be going now.” Another cafe he'd have to avoid now. That meant he could only go to one of the twelve cafes in his area. Wonderful.

“Come back soon. I'd like to share another one-sided conversation with you.” Francis smiled and winked at Arthur, taking both of their cups to the kitchen.

-=---===

Francis was at the bar, his arm around a rather tipsy blonde woman who was chatting up a storm. She wasn't really asking him anything, and she was more talking at him rather than talking with him, so he just stood next to her and nodded, anxiously waiting to get on with the inevitable. It was more than likely she would go home with him tonight and leave in the morning as so many had before; all Francis had to do was close the deal and get her out the door with him. Whether she went home with him really didn't matter to him, but waking up next to a stranger was better than waking up alone. So he smiled that winning smile and her mouth gradually stopped moving, a drunken smirk appearing on her lips.

“My place or yours?” She asked, fingers now trailing Francis's neck.

“Mine.” He didn't even know why she asked. Every one of them always ended up going to his apartment, though he realized she was not aware of that. She grabbed her coat and he grabbed his, pulling them on, and stepping out into the frosted London air. His apartment was two blocks away from the bar, walking distance. As they made their first few steps out the door, Francis quickly realized that the woman was much more intoxicated than he'd previously thought. She was stumbling and slurring out her words, blacking out at some points and when she wasn't trying to amble around like a newborn deer, she was on the ground crawling. Really, it didn't matter to him whether or not she came home with him. He caught her arm and pulled her to him, wrapping an arm around her waist for support.

“Where do you live?” He was tired now and he wasn't sure why.

“Louaeghton.” Her slurred speech was getting worse.

“Loughton?” That was a good 18 miles from here and he wasn't in any shape for driving. He would just have to take her back to his apartment and wait for her to sober up enough to get her home. She was smiling, and he was pretty sure she was in another world. Perhaps one much better than this; one where she didn't go to bars and drink herself into a state of stupidity. Though he could be wrong, he liked to think that when people drank they did so with causality. One shouldn't just get blindingly drunk for frivolous reasons, as he always said. Not when they had things to lose.

He unlocked his apartment door and carried her inside. She had passed out on the way there, greatly complicating their trip up three flights of stairs. He placed her in his bed, taking off her outer coat, and pulling the blanket up to cover her. He would sleep on the couch.

=-=-=-=

It was Saturday, Francis' day off from work. He'd watched the embarrassed and extremely apologetic woman leave this morning, after they'd had breakfast. She'd explained that she was angry at her husband, and so she went out drinking, not intending to get entirely wasted, but she apparently had a history of alcohol abuse and she was very grateful that Francis hadn't left her in an alley somewhere. He was tired of this, of her. She was too grateful and nice to be thanking him. His intentions hadn't started out pure the night before, so she shouldn't be thanking him. He was only thinking of himself.

His days off were few, cherished, and despised. When they came around, he sat down and worked on his novel, trying to make it better, trying to make it something that someone would want to publish. Usually, after an hour or two of staring at his computer, he hadn't made much progress. A sentence was rewritten or a comma was added. He could never come up with a good ending, and while none of the publishing companies he'd submitted his work to had told him why it had been rejected, he was sure that the endings were a majority of the reason. The other reason, he theorized, was that his novel was about love: something Francis himself had never truly experienced. He'd deleted the novel several times, and rewritten the entirety of it, hoping for a better outcome than the last, but always coming up with nearly the same prose and ideas. His main character was always a Byronic Hero, and the love interest was always condescending and sarcastic, and they always ended up getting together somehow. In some versions, they got to live happily ever after, in others, they were separated, and in the last version, they'd died by each other's sides, whispering about hope when the light left their eyes.

The story lines were unstable, bordering on impossible, and they resembled a somewhat grandiose version of what Francis wished his life was like: adventure and a kind of love that wouldn't be gone when the sun rose the next morning. It seemed that his dreams were too far from reality, even for a fantasy novel. He was ready to give up, trash the novel and just resign himself to working at the cafe for the rest of his life. Maybe one day he'd pick up someone at the bar who he would take a liking to and they'd start a relationship, maybe. Or maybe he'd die destitute and alone, one never knows.

The paragraph he was reading was getting on his nerves, he'd made the main character too whiny. He deleted the entire paragraph, closing out his word program and opening up a blank page, his mind drifting to thoughts other than a new plot. “I worked hard.” Francis could hear it echo in the back of his mind. “The first twenty jobs I applied for rejected me...I worked my way up from the bottom...” It was unlike Francis to take (albeit indirect) advice from an Englishman, but he supposed it was better than giving up his dream. He began to write, trying to keep in mind the things he was trying to leave out this time around (the sobbing hero and the annoying love interest).

=-=-=-=-=-

There were twenty publishing companies in Francis' area and he'd been to nineteen of them. The only one he hadn't tried was “McAllistar's Publishing”, the company furthest from Francis' apartment. McAllistar was by far the smallest publishing company he had seen. It was a small house near the outskirts of town with a sign that had the publishing company's name printed on it. He was standing on the sidewalk outside, pacing back and forth, trying to get up the courage to go inside. This was his last chance. After this, if it didn't pan out, he would give up and look for another job somewhere else. Maybe he'd go back to France and get out of this awful city. He just wanted to get it over with.

=-=-=-=-=-=

The secretary’s heels clicked over the tile as she led him to one of the back offices in the publishing house. He'd come on a whim, without an appointment, and he would most likely have to wait around for a few hours before anyone got to him, if they even got to him at all. At the time, the direct route, going in himself and physically handing them his manuscript, seemed like the best idea. He had been ignored too many times when he'd just sent the darn thing in. The secretary turned to him and gestured toward a waiting room, “Mr. Kirkland will be right with you.”

=-=-=-=

When he had arrived in the morning, it was sunny and there was no one in the waiting room with him. It had been about four hours now, and people had come and gone. There were two men sitting across from him, whispering to each other and glancing around the room, each with a thick stack of papers on their laps and a nervous glint in their eyes. It was their first time in a publishing house, Francis could tell. He was like that his first time too: full of nerves and bottled up excitement. When he looked closer, he could see they were younger and the one on the left had trousers on that were a little too small for him. Young, fresh faces, who were probably much better at what they did than Francis could ever hope to be.

The door opened again, and the two men across from him got up and went inside. He wondered what 'Mr. Kirkland' looked like. He was probably another middle-aged man with a dirty cigarette hanging out of his mouth, tired and greasy. Francis had only met one publisher that hadn't met at least one of those qualifications, and she had been nice to him, but ended up rejecting his book. Kirkland sounded like an old man name. The door opened again and the two young men exited, looking more nervous and scared than when they had gone in.

“Natalia! Those were all of my appointments today, right?” The publisher yelled. Francis knew that voice. Where did he know that voice from?

“Yes, Mr. Kirkland, but there was one walk-in. I told him you would deal with him after your appointments.”

“Well why in the bloody hell did you do that?” 'Mr. Kirkland' stepped out from behind his open door and glared at 'Natalia'. Then, his eyes landed on Francis. It was Arthur. Francis hadn't taken into account that Arthur worked in publishing, let alone that he would happen to work at the one publishing house he chose to make his last ditch attempt at publishing his book.

“What in bloody hell are you doing here?” Arthur looked as if he nearly had a heart attack. The secretary—Natalia—walked back to the front room and closed the door behind her.

“Ah, you've caught me, I've been stalking you.” Francis stood, manuscript in hand, “I thought you said you were an editor.”

“It's a small publishing company.” He glared at the Frenchman and made no move to go inside his office.

“I'm here to try and publish my book, mon ami.”

“I am not your friend,” Arthur turned toward his office and started walking, “Come this way.”

-=-=-

It was odd, while Arthur had met his one-night-stand's at their places of work, they had never managed to find him at his work. And then there was this man, who he'd met not only once, but twice now. Hopefully this man's—Francis'—intentions were really to publish his supposed book. Arthur sat down at his desk and Francis sat in the chair in front of his desk, looking oddly nervous. He hadn't imagined that a man like Francis, who seemed to radiate confidence, could be nervous.

“Book.” Arthur extended his hand and Francis handed him the manuscript. Arthur smiled. It was always somewhat empowering knowing that you held what was probably someone's life work in your hands. The fact that you could also make or break their dreams was a nice added bonus. While Arthur hadn't outright rejected anyone because he wasn't fond of them, he would admit to going out of his way to find mistakes in their manuscripts in order to reject them. He had every intention of doing that to Francis, even if by some miracle the Frenchman had written the next bestseller.

He opened to the front page, reading a few sentences here and there. It wasn't exactly prime prose, but it was alright. He'd have to work to find problems with it, unless the plot was complete trash. Arthur could tell Francis was nervous: he was shifting slightly in his chair and avoiding eye contact, two classic signs of someone who either had never tried to publish anything or someone who had been rejected one too many times.

“It looks alright so far, but I'll have to read it through to make sure the plot is feasible and knowing the French, it won't be.” Arthur tucked the manuscript into his briefcase and smirked. He could see a spark in Francis' eyes, as if he weren't expecting to hear that. He had been rejected before, Arthur would bet on it. That would only make rejecting him more satisfying.

=-=-=-==-=-=

Arthur was settled peacefully at his desk a few days later, just going through the week's maybe-to-be-published novels. There were only a few this week: a horror story that was roughly 300 pages too long, a fantasy novel that hadn't really interested Arthur to begin with, and Francis' novel. He was putting the last one off, expecting the work to be an over-exaggerated love story. Love was something he'd never been fond of and love stories were something that added to the mass mania of silly things like 'love at first sight', so he tried his best to stay away from them. But, he had to get to it eventually, so with a scowl and a cup of fresh black tea, he cracked open Francis' manuscript.

He was forty pages in when he realized he hadn't been marking mistakes and when he looked back through, he found quite a few typing errors and nothing else. While he wouldn't say he was enthralled in the story, he would admit to being vaguely interested in what was going to happen next. It was a love story, as he had expected, and he had groaned when the two characters first met: predicting how it would turn out. But the romance was sparse and bitter: most of the time it seemed as if the two were rivals or even enemies rather than story-book lovers. Arthur found the arguments interesting and grew to like both of the characters respectively: the main male for his charm and confidence, and the main female for her sarcasm and wit. The book was good, but the ending was rushed. It was like Francis had finished it without knowing what to do and therefore just tried to tie up all the loose ends somehow.

As much as Arthur would hate himself later, he decided the book needed to have a chance on the market (after fixing the ending, that is). He wasn't so un-fond of the man as to deny him a chance at his dream. Apparently Arthur had a heart after all. Unfortunately, the ending was a problem that needed to be fixed, which meant that Arthur would have to contact the Frenchman about fixing it. E-mail seemed to be the most effective way of getting in to contact with someone without actually seeing them, so Arthur got up and found his laptop, quickly wrote out an e-mail stating that Francis needed to fix the ending, and sent it. Francis would hopefully fix up the ending without needing additional assistance (if he did, Arthur might drop the book and forget about trying to publish it) and they would both go on their merry ways, never seeing each other ever again.