Arthur has always had a fondness for poetry. Its ability to express exactly what he wanted to without him uttering a single word was simply beautiful. It gave him the chance to say what he needed to without saying anything at all. Normally he would have kept the thoughts hidden, but after sharing a dorm room with Francis for three years, he decided to make a small change. Sticky notes started littering the walls anywhere you turned in the cramped space, almost all of them a quick thought on love or a testimony to "your beauty". He never bothered to specify who it was addressed to, and Francis didn't dare ask.

"Your beauty is the sea

And the waves rolling in and out

Sometimes they reach me again

And lick at my toes

A simple reminder

Of the deep water I once drowned in"

Some nights Arthur thinks Francis will say something, as he pulls a note off the wall and stares at it curiously, but there is no question uttered and Arthur doesn't ask where the note has disappeared to.

"In the morning I awake to find

Missing notes and empty walls

And I wonder

When you really started to care this much"

Francis keeps a collection. One of all his favorite poems off the walls and the ones that made his heart ache and the ones that repaired it. They're stashed away under his bed, in an old wood box in a way that makes him feel as if he's a young boy again, stashing away the pictures her took of the boy next door, a sense of shame rising up in his chest as he slams the lid closed. Arthur doesn't ask what's in the box when he's vacuuming under the bed, some sort of a respect for his privacy he's only recently acquired.

Francis couldn't place the day they started tip-toeing around each other. The first year they lived together was filled with shouting and red faces and a first aid kit they agreed to keep on the counter because Francis was prone to scratching and Arthur refused to stop an argument until blood was shed. The second year was less violent, and all the hatred simply travelled through words. (It also came out through angry drunken sex on the 6th of October, and the 10th, and the 23rd … but neither remembers anyways). But the third year was so careful it was as if Francis thought Arthur was made of the same china his teacups were and Arthur believed Francis suddenly became a precious piece of art he wouldn't dare scratch. Neither mentioned it when Arthur hung his hand off the side of the couch and Francis's fingers tapped gently against it from his own spot in the armchair. Neither mentioned how all of Arthur's poems were addressed to "you", because the notion they were being written for Francis was too absurd for even a hopeful Frenchman to believe.

After months of finger tapping and tea waiting on the counter whenever either arrived home (and another night of drunken sex, but neither admitted to remembering it, although both of them did), Arthur started to notice things. He started to notice Francis snatching papers out of view whenever he got too close and a blush so faint he wondered if he had imagined it whenever their feet ended up tangled as they shared the couch and he still didn't mention it (maybe he did, but they were both drunk again, and instead of sex it was cuddling and sobbing and they really didn't remember any of it this time… or so they led the other to believe).

"Arthur, are you aware you have a wonderful profile?"

When Francis asked to draw him, Arthur assumed it was the first time, not the five hundredth.

"Shut up."

He wondered how Francis sketched out the lines of his face with such ease, unaware of just how long Francis had studied those features.

"Ah, finished!"

"I… Ah… Well, it's not exactly accurate, is it?"

He didn't ask why he drew him so beautiful when he just simply wasn't.

"Are you insulting my work?"

The argument lasted for days, and the picture ended up in the trash bin, ripped beyond repair (Arthur would never admit he tried for three hours to repair it), along with the happy façade they've been keeping up. The next day's poem is called "pain" and Francis doesn't ask why.

"It isn't pain because I hate you

It is pain

Because I don't"

(And maybe that night neither of them is drunk but they both pretend they are and Arthur is curled up in Francis's arms and maybe tears fall, but they both pretend it never happened, so maybe it never did).

Francis doesn't really understand until months later when he's been drawing Arthur for hours and hours and he realizes why and there's a pain in his chest so sharp he had to dig out his box and even then the poems don't help.

Francis doesn't really realize until he's standing in the hallway on Sunday morning and Arthur's gone out with Alfred for breakfast and all he sees in front of him is the day's latest poem.

"Looking back, I believe I have spent a lifetime trying to define love

That has already been defined

Love is that horrid purple shirt you once wrapped around me

When I showed up at the front door after a walk in the rain

Love is the "you are positively insane…" you muttered

Not realizing you are the reason I stood out there in the first place

Thinking perhaps a heavy shower

Could wash thoughts of you out of my head…

Now I don't really believe I want to

Because love is simply… you"

And maybe Arthur doesn't understand until he gets home and there are paintings of him scattered around the room and Francis is wearing that same horrid purple shirt from years ago, working on yet another portrait of Arthur's face.

But he doesn't really realize until he's asked what Francis is doing, and he simply smiles, and whispers back,

"You wrote what love is to you, and I supposed I would paint it."

(And maybe neither of them are drunk and no one is crying and they both remember because neither want to forget just what it feels like to lay in bed with the one you love, ankles crisscrossed and hands intertwined, a silent "I love you" they never would dare say floating between them, and a peace they didn't bother questioning because it felt more right than the fighting ever had).