Characters: FrUK, France and England post-Entente Cordiale and WWI
Rating: K
Warnings: Post traumatic stress/shell shock
Synopsis: This might be considered hurt/comfort. A Remembrance Day fic about the first commemoration of the holiday. While the King of England and the President of France dine and discuss on the night before the one year anniversary of Armistice Day (the end of WWI on November 11), their nations observe a slightly different, more somber ritual. Established post-Entente Cordiale FrUK love-hate-friendship, but complicated and slightly broken by the destruction of WWI. While France is suffering from PTSD/shell shock, England is his safe harbor in the storm.
Music: "Be Still," The Fray or "In the Dark Places," PJ Harvey

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Be Still (Nov. 10, 1919), a FrUK fic for Remembrance Day
by crashedtimemachine

Buckingham Palace, 10 November, 1919

"Do you need any help up the—"

"I've got it..."

"But the top step's a bit tricky an—"

"Angleterre, I can manage."

His firm tone gave England pause, and he stepped back to watch his old friend--what a funny word, that, when it can be used between them as easily as enemy could one hundred years before. France still bore a limp. He hadn't smiled all day, his face was pale, and his hair stringy and pulled back into a messy tail.

( When he had arrived in Paris that morning, England had found France lying face down on the floor beside his bed... )

Characters/Pairings: FrUK, France/England/France
Rating: T
Warnings: human AU and names, NSFW oral (non-explicit, really), drunkenness, overuse of parenthesis

Synopsis: Feeling nostalgic for the punk rock persona of his youth, Arthur has been going to a weekly punk show at a club near home for two months. Each week he meets up with the same man. He's French and charming; they talk over the music, buy each other drinks, and screw in the alley behind the club. But it’s fine as long as they don’t talk about real life or exchange names. Right? It's nothing.

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Float, 1999
by crashedtimemachine

England floats serenely on his back, slowly allowing himself to be washed out into the channel, and he can’t really say that he’s worried about it. His eyes are closed and the sun beats down on his skin from one side while the sea water chills it from the other, creating a balance he’s grown to love over the years.

The waves gently rock and lull him into a deep calm. The soft sounds of the waves against his arms and legs are the quiet echoes of their lapping against the bows of his massive ships. The screaming of the gulls are not unlike that of the flocks that floated just above the sailors scurrying across the deck. Even the scent of brine and decay and life is unchanged.

He tilts his head back to wet his hair thoroughly (absorb more of the sea, take it into his skin and bones, never again to part with it).

He misses this, he reluctantly admits; England’s fleet of nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers — the best of the best, naturally — just don’t have the same...well...as France would put it, je ne sais quoi. (Blast that bloody frog for infecting his vocabulary.)

There was something indefinably thrilling about standing on the bow of a cutter as it broke through wave after wave, hunting down stragglers of Spain’s massive fleet as they made their retreat.

England’s hand curls and fists in the water at his sides. His arms feel heavy, leaden with the weight of the water and the years.

It was a different era and they’ve all moved on.

He wonders if he’s the only one longing for the simplicity of those days.