Chapter Text
Arthur is a point man.
There are certain things a point man, any good point man, has to be. One of these includes being observant, being able to look at a man and know his character, his quirks, his flaws with a single glance.
Arthur is the best point man in the dreamsharing business. This is not a boast; it is no more bragging than someone perfunctorily announcing that the sky is blue, that grass is green, that Arthur is the best there is out there. It is a fact.
So when Eames kisses him as they both come down from a post-coital high in a hotel room in Reykjavik, hot and wet and open-mouthed as he pulls out and leaves the bed to dispose of the used condom before bending down to reach for his hastily discarded pants, Arthur is not surprised.
He tells himself that this was what he expected all along, nodding and wishing Eames well as the forger smirks and blows a kiss at him when he leaves. He tells himself that he never hoped for anything else, because that would be stupid, and Arthur is anything but that.
The key to being Eames’s lover, Arthur knows, is not to love him.
The dreamsharing industry runs on rumours and lies. One of these rumours, as Arthur hears in passing in a cafe in Marseille, is that before Cobb, before the best extractor-point man team burst violently, painfully into existence, there was Arthur and Eames.
For once, the rumours are right.
The first time Arthur meets Eames, he is with Spec Ops and Eames is with the SAS. Dreamshare, Arthur’s CO tells him. This is going to change everything.
It does.
The PASIV was only a prototype then, fresh and untested, straight from the bowels of some hush-hush government science facility. Arthur surfaces from his first dream, gasping and exhilarated, half-hard in his Army cargos. His neck still throbs faintly, a phantom pain from where it had been broken by Eames in the dream. He yanks the needle from his arm, and his eyes skitter across the room to the members of the British team on the opposite end.
When they meet Eames’s, they find him smirking, eyes dancing with the same giddy thrill and hands flexing, clenching and unclenching. Arthur can still feel them wrapped around his neck.
The first time Arthur meets Eames is also the first time they fuck.
That part comes later in the day, in a filthy alley behind the pub just outside the military base, with the both of them panting into each other’s mouth, lips hard and bruising, teeth nipping and biting.
Eames’s calloused hand is shoved into Arthur’s pants, tight and unforgiving and mercilessly wonderful, only limited by the constraints of the fabric. Arthur’s own hands are trapped between them, and he has to squirm to get sufficient room between them to stroke Eames through his jeans, earning a muffled Jesus Christ and a bruise sucked onto the nape of his neck.
Arthur fumbles unsteadily with the fly of Eames’s jeans when Eames’s thumb drifts across the slit of his cock, nail lightly scraping and pushing in. His breath is coming in spurts, blood pounding in his ears, and it is an eternity before he manages to wrangle Eames’s jeans out of the way, wrapping his fingers around the impressive length of his blood-filled shaft. Fuck, darling, you’re a bloody health hazard, Eames groans in his ear. He fists Eames clumsily, a small part of his brain hissing in embarrassment at his sloppy technique, but Eames’s hand is around Arthur’s cock, and his fingers are trailing down, down, and his index finger finds Arthur’s hole and slips in -
Arthur comes so hard that his vision whites out. When he can see again, he notices that his hand has fallen away from Eames’s cock, and Eames is jerking himself off. Arthur feels mortified for being so inconsiderate, and nudges Eames’s hands away, dropping to his knees to take his cock into his mouth.
When Eames spurts down his throat, Arthur swallows all of it, giving the head a quick kittenish lick as he lets Eames’s cock fall from his lips, smiling up through his lashes.
Oh my God, Eames manages to breath out, chest still rising and falling in rapid succession from all the exertion. Arthur is surprised when Eames pulls him in for a kiss, harsh and perfect.
In retrospect, Arthur should have realised that the best way to begin a relationship was not after sex in an alleyway, with the both of them horny as fuck after killing each other over and over during the day.
This is what Arthur knows about forgers: every job is where they play a role, slipping on the skin of a different person, reveling in their personalities and mannerisms and eccentricities. It is highly intimate job, digging your way into someone’s mind, so much so that you become them.
He supposes this is why Eames is so reserved with everyone else, intensely private in his understanding that individuality is not so individual after all. Eames’s distance is so carefully camouflaged, so artfully concealed that he tricks you into thinking that he is open, revealing, what-you-see-is-what-you-get.
Yusuf asks, what do you even do in your downtime, and Eames laughs, rich and throaty, hand thrown dramatically over his heart; me, darling, I’m a man of adventure and daredevil exploits, and Arthur quietly admires the way he speaks and says nothing at all. Ariadne questions, where do you stay?, and Eames points at the newspaper article on EU integration that he is reading, eyes mock-serious; global citizens, Ariadne, we’re all global citizens here, and Arthur watches the way truth is spun into untruth and half-truth.
There are precious few things that Arthur knows about Eames, for all of his supposed legendary skill at being able to unearth Jesus’s birth records himself if he wanted to.
He knows that Eames was born into money; old, blue-blooded money, and stands to inherit a title. He knows that Eames likes whiskey more than scotch, Macallan over Glenfidditch, neat over on the rocks. He knows that Eames likes heat, likes the oppressive humidity of places like Mombasa and Singapore and Dubai, probably the result of living one too many years in bone-chilling England. He knows that Eames prefers white over wheat bread, Lapsung Souchong over Earl Grey tea. He knows that Eames likes his eggs done easy, his pancakes drenched in maple syrup.
He knows that Eames will break off whatever it is they have between them if he realises that Arthur has fallen a little bit in love with him.
And Arthur - well, he’s always been a little too selfish, and he’s never understood what it meant anyway, to love someone enough to let them go.
Organisation is every point man’s best friend. Lists, therefore, are one of the few things that make Arthur’s neatly-ordered life go smoothly.
In a world where dream and reality are pulled so tightly together that one bleeds into the other like a dying man with a gut shot, certainty is tenuous and all-important. There are things one needs to know, to be more than absolutely certain of, to be able to snap your fingers in the blink of an eye and say, entirely sure, that you are this or you are that, but never that or that.
So Arthur keeps a list of things he is completely sure of close to his chest, things he knows like the back of his hand, like the crisp bite of morning air, like the sound of a gun being fired, like the shadowed plane of Eames’s hipbone.
- He was born on the fifth of June in the middle of a sweltering New York summer, to Amelia Louise Wolfsheim and Mark Levine.
- He is twenty-eight years old, and he has three houses; one in Paris, another in LA, and the other in Mombasa.
- His totem is a red die from the Venetian in Vegas, and he painstakingly worked on it so that it will unfailingly read three, three, three on every throw.
- When he was twelve, he underwent the same battery of tests that every boy had to go through, and the results were clear: he was not one of those males that could get pregnant.
These are facts he knows, as sure as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, as sure as how a minute is sixty seconds in reality, as sure as the way Eames always smells a little like paint thinner and musk.
When they disembark from the plane following the successful completion of the Fischer job, Arthur is flush with adrenaline and arousal, burning with euphoria; he locks eyes with Eames, and it is like they are back in the military, drunk off the success of another barrier, another frontier smashed to bits in their blaze of collective brilliance.
He is fully expecting the knock on the door of his suite at the Hilton, just as he is fully expecting the way Eames’s mouth crashes into his the minute he swings the door open, the kiss desperate and hot and pushing him from half to rock-hard in seconds.
The door slams shut behind them, and he lets Eames push and guide them towards the bedroom, hands and lips never remaining apart for long, clothes stripped off and messily thrown like the necessary casualties of a violent war.
Darling, darling, Eames is moaning into his ear, the words meaning nothing and everything, and then they are naked, divested of coverings and bare to the eye, and Arthur can find symbolism in this, he is sure he can -
And then Eames is pushing him down onto the mattress, lube dripping from his slick fingers, hand dipping to nudge at Arthur’s hole, pushing in and scissoring and the burn is so, so good -
Fuck, fuck, I don’t have condoms, Arthur, please tell me you -
Arthur whines, high and needy, something he is sure he would be mortified about, were he coherent or cogent enough to be mortified. Fine, just - I need - I’m clean, I promise, I’m clean - just need your cock, Eames, fucking come on.
Eames groans, burying his face in the hollow of Arthur’s throat, you’re going to be the death of me, pet, he says, and then he lines himself up and pushes in, and that is the end of intelligible thought for Arthur for a long, long time.
The first time that Arthur sees Eames after they bareback is just under two months later, in Mombasa.
Arthur tells himself that their post-inception victory fuck was nothing special, nothing to be hurt about, and gives himself hell for thinking that night would have been any different from the others.
He is working on compiling research on their mark (Owen Harding, thirty-four, wanted for insider trading) when Eames strolls into their warehouse. Their extractor, Dave, is a relatively established name in the business, and so greets Eames warmly and like an old friend when the forger arrives.
Arthur nods at Eames; this is his standard greeting. He resolutely ignores the way Eames smells the same as always, the way Eames has lost weight, like he has been running from something.
He absolutely does not think about how he woke up that morning in the Hilton to cold sheets and a fading scent, discarded suit folded neatly on the desk, Do Not Disturb sign still hanging from the door handle, lover vanished into the ether.
He does not think about how he sat up in a bed two sizes too big, dried come between his legs, and knew, with bone-deep, unshakeable certainty, that Eames was gone, and for the first time since they began this arrangement, Arthur found himself thinking: this cannot last.
Dave clocks off at six, announcing his departure with a stifled yawn. Arthur still has Harding’s October financial transaction records to look through, so he nods and waves the extractor away, concentration on the task at hand.
It is nearing nine when a warm hand drops onto his shoulder, breaking his train of thought. He looks up from his research to find Eames gazing down, eyes unreadable with an emotion Arthur can’t place, before flickering to his usual teasing condescension.
“God forbid anyone calls you a workaholic,” Eames says, smile forming at the corners of his lips. Arthur nods absently in reply, shuffling the papers on his desk into some semblance of order, pulling up a folder to slot the research into. Eames reaches down to deftly pluck it from his fingers.
“There’s no need to be so serious all the time, darling,” Eames continues. “But if you must, I can give you something else to be serious about,” he smirks, eyes darting down to where he is already hard in his garishly green pants.
Arthur knows where this is going. He is up for it, just as he is sure he will always want Eames, but tonight, he wants to go into this knowing that there will be something more tomorrow.
Instead, he lets a slow smile climb onto his face, and lets Eames lead him back to his flat where they have fucked before, lifetimes ago, and lets Eames splay him open on his 800 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, moaning and gasping.
When he slides back into consciousness the next morning, he keeps his eyes closed for several long seconds, pretending that he is not alone in his apartment.
The first time Arthur attempts to go under after they bareback is in Yusuf’s dream den in Mombasa, two nights after Eames arrives for the Harding job.
Two minutes into the dream, his own projections turn on him, vicious and murderous. He is literally ripped apart and wakes, heart pounding, to the sight of Yusuf, concerned, bending over him, hands carefully sliding the needle out from Arthur’s wrist.
“What was that,” Arthur manages to say after his heart rate slows to normal and his hands can stop shaking, words more a statement than a question.
Yusuf frowns, eyes level and curious on Arthur’s. “It’s the standard Somnacin blend.”
“I’ve never had my projections murder me before,” Arthur protests. “It must be something in the compound.”
“Ah,” Yusuf says, gaze still searching and probing, single syllable tinged with knowing. “Are you - Could you be, you know - ” He waves his hands in a vaguely circling motion.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur snaps, annoyance rising as the adrenaline wore off. “I don’t speak in inflection. ‘Could I be’ what?”
“Well, uh - pregnant. Could you be pregnant? This effect has been known to occur in pregnant individuals. The mind somehow detects a foreign consciousness in the body and turns on the dreamer.”
“No,” Arthur responds immediately, completely certain.
Arthur goes for the test anyway, Yusuf tagging along out of scientific curiosity.
The doctor at the clinic is a great deal less professional that Arthur would like, but Yusuf points out that getting a pregnancy test is hardly rocket science, and professionalism or no, just about any doctor can get it done.
As a result, Arthur is told that he is seven weeks pregnant by a doctor who is too busy chewing gum and tapping something on her iPhone to look at him while she announces it.
“But I can’t be,” he sputters, “I took the standard tests and everything, I can’t bear children.”
“Mmm,” she responds disinterestedly, lips rounding to blow a bubble. “Tough, they must have gotten your test wrong, it happens.”
She recommends a gynecologist, and Yusuf pats him in manful sympathy as they walk towards where Yusuf’s beat-up Honda Civic is parked.
Yusuf makes a few attempts at conversation, things like you know who the father is, right, and I’m sure everything will work out fine, and all Arthur can do to keep from jumping out the car and bolting for the airport is to clench his fists in his lap and think: this is it, you knew it wouldn’t last, now it’s over, and how the fuck am I going to tell Eames?
Arthur forces himself to follow this through logically. “I’ll have to pull out of this job,” he tells Yusuf, mind already darting ahead to the excuse he is going to have to come up with to sufficiently convince Dave. His mind jumps and skitters to the explanation he is going to have to conjure to convince Eames.
“It’s three days to the job,” Yusuf points out, frowning as he maneuvers his way through the serpentine traffic. “If you pull out now, your reputation’s going to take a hard beating.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Arthur hisses, slamming an irate fist against the dashboard. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Yusuf eye him warily, the way one would a rabid animal.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur concedes after a long moment of silence. “It’s just been a very trying day.”
Yusuf nods, before shooting him a hesitant glance, teeth biting his bottom lip. “Are you...well. I mean, you - Are you going to keep it? The baby, I mean.”
Arthur turns away to stare out the window, gazing unseeingly at the shockingly blue sky, the sun-weathered stone walls of surrounding buildings, the darkened faces of the locals, the yellow sand of the roads.
Beside him, Yusuf shifts uncomfortably in his seat, the Kenyan’s inhale harsh in the car before he continues to speak. “Can you - I don’t know, maybe you should talk to the other father about it? He deserves to know.”
“No, he - he won’t want it. He’ll hate me for it. He’ll stay for the baby, and maybe he’ll be fine with it for a while, but he’s born to travel, and there’s no place for a child in our business. Sooner or later, he’ll hate me - or worse, hate the baby - for tying him down, and no child deserves to be damned for the mistakes of his or her parents.”
Yusuf falls silent, mouth pursed in a line, fingers tapping lightly on the wheel. “It’s Eames’s, isn’t it,” he asks-says.
Arthur startles, head shooting up from the dashboard to swivel and face Yusuf, words of denial on the tip of his tongue.
“I’ve known that you two’ve been involved for quite some time,” Yusuf resumes, eyes dark on his. “Eames sometimes mentions that he’s shacked up with someone in the business, but that the two of you don’t see each other very frequently. And whenever the both of you run a job together - and don’t think I don’t notice how he always accepts jobs from you - he always seems to be in a better mood. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.”
Arthur opens his mouth to explain, no, it isn’t Eames’s, this is from a one-night stand, I don’t know who the father is, but Yusuf is quick to shut him down.
“I don’t know you very well, but you’re not the type to fuck around with others when you’re with someone, so don’t tell me the baby is the unfortunate outcome of a drunken hook-up.”
Arthur has run out of words to say, suddenly so very, very tired. He just nods slowly, eyes drifting to gaze back out of the window, heart aching and mind meandering to easier thoughts; the way Eames flashes him a sly smile when he thinks no one was looking, the way Eames presses soft kisses to the nape of his neck, the way Eames likes to trace meaningless patterns on the canvas of his back when he is warm and pliant in Eames’s arms.
“Eames seems to like you a lot,” Yusuf probes, and Arthur wants to snort in derision. “Are you sure he will be so against it?”
The sky outside is blue, brilliant and bright and painful.
“We’re not lovers,” Arthur says.
“This is my lover, Andrew Gray,” their mark introduces. Richard Lambert-Chang made his fortune in the stock market, and has gathered an even larger sum to invest in choice shares. Their client wants to know which shares Lambert-Chang are eyeing and why.
“Delighted,” Eames purrs, eyes hooded and flirtatious as he accepts Gray’s handshake.
Lambert-Chang smiles at the ease with which his lover and new friend seem to be taking to each other, turning to Arthur to continue the conversation. “Is this your...” he trails off, head tilted in Gray’s direction before he surreptitiously gestures at Eames.
The Peninsula’s ballroom is packed shoulder-to-shoulder, so Arthur feels Eames’s body tense at the implication of Lambert-Chang’s words, even as he smoothly conducts a conversation with Gray. Arthur stifles the flash of hurt that lances through his chest, getting the less-than-subtle hint from Eames.
“No, no,” he tells Lambert-Chang, smiling as genially as possible. “We’re just colleagues.”
“Oh?” comes the curious response, eyes darting from Arthur to Eames and back. “I apologise, then. I thought I saw something between the two of you.”
“You’re not the first one to make that mistake, darling,” Eames laughs, rejoining their conversation as the one he has with Gray peters out. “Really, though - God forbid the two of us ever become lovers. We’d be at each other’s throats all the time.”
Eames bumps his shoulder against Arthur’s in a show of friendly affection, and Arthur has to muster up more strength than he thought he would need to send Eames a weak smile in answer. His poor performance does little to fool Eames, and inwardly, Arthur swears, because he really should be better at this, he should know that this is how it is between them. Eames’s eyes are searching and speculative on his for a brief second, before darting back to Lambert-Chang’s as he throws his head back to laugh, deep and full, at something the man says.
Later, as they exit the hotel in a stolen Maserati, Eames turns to face Arthur from behind the wheel, eyes hidden in the dark shadows of the Hong Kong night. “Just to clarify, pet - we’re not lovers, are we?”
Arthur’s hand freezes from where he was rifling through his notes on his lap. “Is that how you would describe us?” he hedges, hand resuming movement with a barely perceptible jerk. He is sure that Eames spots it anyway, that fucking observant bastard.
“No,” Eames tells him. “Let’s not make this into something it’s not.”
Some part of this feels like a subconscious test, like a hoop Eames is making him jump through to prove that whatever it is between them hasn’t gotten too complicated for Eames’s liking. This part makes Arthur want to punch Eames, to yell at him and spit out everything he’s been wanting to say, things like I’m sorry you don’t want me to love you, but I can’t help it, and do you think that maybe, just maybe, you can love me back too?
Another part of this, a smaller and infinitely scarier part, makes Arthur feel like this is a subconscious test on something he doesn’t yet know, one that he has just failed abysmally.
Lack of love for him aside, Arthur knows that Eames will never be content to settle down.
Eames is and will be eternally twenty-nine, eternally vivacious and brilliant and so-bright-it-hurts. Eames is larger than life, flitting his way across the continents, charming and conning and breaking hearts, forever content with his nomadic existence, the world too small for one man. Eames is like summer sunlight in the palm of your hand, warm and heady and flirting heat, untamable and uncatchable, doomed to die a fiery death, blazes of glory that stories will be spun from.
Once upon a time, Arthur believed that he could keep up with Eames, could maintain the breathless counterpoint that came with the forger’s flight across the world, hopping onto planes and jauntily traipsing onto boats. He thought he could do it; could move fast enough, run far enough, to keep abreast enough to dance in Eames’s periphery, tantalising enough to keep him coming back for more.
That was when Arthur was twenty-three. Now, Arthur is twenty-eight, and five years is a long time to keep running after someone who never slows down, never looks over his shoulder to see if he’s lost you.
Five years, and Arthur isn’t sure he can do this anymore.
Serendipitously, the Harding job doesn’t require the point man to go under with the rest of the team. It isn’t an angle Arthur thinks about exploiting until now, and Dave didn’t press the issue, having worked with Arthur before and used to the point man’s preference to being under with the team when the extraction is being performed.
Arthur speaks to Dave, spinning a story about lingering after-effects from one of Yusuf’s experimental Somnacin compounds, and hey, maybe it’s better for the job if Arthur stays topside this time. Dave is mildly surprised but agrees easily; the extraction is straightforward enough that the presence of a point man in the dream is superfluous.
Eames, however, is much harder to convince.
“Somnacin side-effects,” Eames states, eyebrows raised in disbelief.
Arthur nods, molars grinding down hard against each other. “Did you miss the memo? It’s from experimental compounds.”
Eames levels a probing stare at him, eyes searching. “Arthur, I’ve known you for, what, five years now, and the only time you didn’t come under with us while on a job was because you had two gut shots, a fractured knee, and were unconscious. I’m honestly offended, darling, that you think I’d believe you’re not coming under because of lingering after-effects of an experimental Somnacin compound.”
The warehouse that they are working out of is empty save for the two of them, Yusuf and Dave having clocked out hours before, Dave to work on the architecture of the dream in his hotel room and Yusuf to meet up with a shady chemical supplier.
Arthur has never been very good at lying. He can pass muster when it comes to meeting clients and slipping into new aliases, but he generally leaves the deception and long-cons to the professionals. He mentally curses Eames for being able, for always being able to read him like a book, while Eames himself remains shrouded in mystery, for all of Arthur’s digging.
He runs a tired hand down his face, the first concession of the day that he makes towards the entire clusterfuck of a situation. “I don’t care if you believe me, Eames. That’s just how it is. I’m not coming under with you and Dave.”
Eames stares at him for several more seconds, the gaze weighty and considering. “Okay,” he replies. “If that’s how you want to play it, then okay. But you’ll - ” Eames trails off abruptly, and this catches Arthur’s full attention, because the Eames he knows is never unsure, never anything less than certain. “You’ll let me know if something’s up, won’t you?”
“Nothing that will bother you, I promise,” Arthur rejoins, cracking a smile that he knows is just shy of brittle.
This seems enough to placate Eames, who nods once before turning to saunter out of the warehouse, leaving Arthur standing alone in the shadowed cavern, lit by the sombre light of his laptop.
Eames, Arthur notes, never once looks back.
Their next job together is a month after the Harding one, this time in Tokyo.
Arthur is now eleven weeks along, quietly refusing jobs that require him to go under with them and only picking those that allow him to stay indoors to do the bulk of research. Before this job, Arthur barely even left his flat in Paris, doing his research from home and sending it to the extractors he worked with.
It is a combination of restlessness and a stupid, burning desire to see Eames that has Arthur hopping on the plane to Narita International Airport. The flight is gruelling, long hours that cramp his back and make his neck ache.
He lands in Tokyo at nine in the morning while the air is crisp and bracing, a light tap of cold to the lungs. The extractor, Felicia, a Singaporean that he’s worked with before, calls to inform him that they’ve set up shop in an abandoned office building in Harajuku. He is the second to arrive after her, and they chat companionably over coffee, catching up with each other.
Felicia informs him that she’s brought Ariadne and Eames onto this job, and he learns, through some artfully placed questions, that Eames will be arriving the next day. The conversation eventually rounds back to shop talk, and they discuss the pertinent details of the mark (Hideki Mameha, forty-one, a lawyer; their client wants to know what dirt Mameha plans to use against him in court).
The second day on the slated two-week job sees Ariadne bounce into the office unit at eleven in the morning, bright-eyed and freshly-showered. She mauls Arthur with an enthusiastic hug, punching him on the shoulder for taking so long to get back in touch with her post-inception. He offers her a rare genuine smile, taking in her youthful brilliance and optimism, and wishes he could share some of her idealism and unquenchable verve for life. She wanders off to chat with Felicia about the requirements of the first dream level, and Arthur darts a quick glance to the clock he hung on the wall, with its hands slowly inching closer and closer to three, which is when Felicia informed him Eames is expected to come in.
Eames strolls into the office at three twenty-six, clad in a garish orange and purple ensemble, complete with tweed jacket and alligator loafers. Arthur finds himself having to force his concentration back to the open Word document on his laptop to prevent himself from shoving Eames back out the door and onto the nearest hotel bed. The brief thought that he hopes their kid won’t inherit Eames’s inability to colour-coordinate is sobering, and the sharp pain of his fingernails digging into his palm is a good reminder that Eames -
Well, Eames won’t be his anymore, once Arthur breaks it off.
This is something that he decided on the plane, a conclusion he had no choice but to arrive at. Arthur knows this: he loves Eames. Eames doesn’t want any romantic entanglements. Arthur is pregnant. Eames’s life isn’t made for settling down. Eames isn’t made for settling down. A baby requires a fixed location to grow and develop well in.
Ergo: Arthur has to let Eames go if he wants to keep the baby, which he does. A week after discovering his pregnancy, Arthur was hit with the sudden realisation that keeping their baby was a foregone conclusion. Arthur will do anything to make sure their child grows up safe and loved.
As he enters his suite at ten that night, Arthur isn’t surprised to find that Eames has broken in and is lounging on his king-sized bed. Arthur is hit with a rush of longing to crawl into bed next to Eames, to demand that Eames stay with him, to tie Eames down and sink down on his cock and fuck him until he promises to stop running, to just be content to stay with him. He wants to lock Eames in the room, to keep him there until he loves him enough not to want to leave, to hold a gun to Eames’s temple and demand that he just be still, just for this little while.
Arthur wants many things, none of which he can actually have.
“You look tired, love,” Eames drawls from his position on the bed, smirk creeping its way up onto his sinner’s lips. “Maybe you should come to bed, so I can help you with that.” His smirk is full-blown now, promising pleasure and sticky sin.
Arthur wants to laugh at how fucked-up their situation is. Arthur is pregnant, and he wants, oh how he wants, to go to Eames and make him fulfill all the promises he utters with that lush mouth. Arthur is pregnant, and he hasn’t even told Eames yet, and he still wants to fuck Eames into the mattress, and this is so many kinds of fucked-up that Arthur doesn’t even know what to do anymore.
He slides out of his Zegna jacket, draping it over the back of a nearby chair as he approaches Eames, who tracks his every move with half-lidded, faintly predatory eyes. He lets Eames pull him into a hard kiss that tastes like desperation and searing want at the edges, but nudges Eames’s roaming hands away from the buttons of his shirt. In the dim light of the room, he catches the flicker of Eames’s confusion.
Arthur wants to curl up into a ball, bury himself in the sheets and escape from the world, even if only for scant hours. Instead, he perches himself on the edge of the bed, side kept to Eames, eyes staring resolutely out the bay windows into the deep calm of the night. He feels Eames tense, shifting beside him to lean up against the headboard, facing Arthur full-on, head cocked slightly.
“I can’t,” Arthur says, and the two words are heavy in the darkness, sinking like stones into the already-widening gulf between them.
He hears Eames’s snort, just as he feels the painful licks of Eames’s derision. “You can’t, or you won’t? A world of difference between those two, darling.”
Arthur licks his lips to moisten them, taking the moment to search for courage. “Both, I suppose.”
Eames’s answer is quick and rapier-sharp. “You suppose? The Arthur I know never supposes. Who are you and what have you done to him?”
“I - ” Arthur begins, before cutting himself off as words fail to materialise. I’m pregnant, but please, stay with me anyway. I’m pregnant, but can you find it in you just to stay for a little bit? I’m pregnant, but I don’t expect anything from you, can we remain friends?
He dismisses them all. He won’t beg. It’s a promise he made to himself, alongside the decision he came to on the plane to keep their baby. Arthur will do almost anything for Eames, will give him anything he wants, but Eames gives him so little in return, so surely Arthur is allowed to keep his dignity.
“I’m pregnant,” he eventually says, and the words hang between them for six seconds before Eames gets over his shock enough to respond.
“What the fuck, Arthur - ”
He can hear the anger in Eames’s voice, and he was prepared for this, he really was, but it doesn’t stop it from being a punch to his gut all the same. Arthur knew it would play out this way, but a small part of him still couldn’t help but hope otherwise, and he really should have known better.
Arthur fists his hands on his lap as he continues to speak, determined to follow his plan through to the end even if kills him. “Don’t worry,” he says, harsh bark of laughter accompanying the statement. “It isn’t yours.”
He feels Eames freeze beside him, a jerk to his movements that no one else would notice. Arthur does, of course. He knows Eames’s body as well as his own; the planes and hollows of the geography of the canvas of his skin a conquered land he knows he never had any real claim to, but was content to pretend otherwise.
“It’s not - it’s not mine,” Eames responds, the statement more a repetition of Arthur’s words than a question.
“No,” he answers, and as a grand, shattering, suicidal finale, the perverse twist of the metaphorical knife, he adds, “I’m sorry.”
“Wonderful,” Eames says, and doesn’t look at Arthur as he leaves.
The sound of fading footsteps, Arthur thinks, is the loneliest sound of all.
The day before the Hideki job goes down, Eames vanishes. Arthur is a great deal less worried than Felicia and Ariadne, confident that Eames can handle himself and used to his disappearing acts.
“He gets like that sometimes,” he tries to explain to Ariadne, who ignores his comment and goes on to ask him if any of his less savoury contacts will know Eames’s whereabouts.
In the end, to placate Felicia and Ariadne and to escape the stifling office, he agrees to track Eames down.
The past two weeks have been terse between the two of them, with Eames avoiding any sort of one-to-one interaction, getting Ariadne to run interference. Where Eames would typically accost Arthur throughout the day to discuss the details of his forge, there was nothing but radio silence, with Eames flickering in and and out of the office like a ghost.
Even Felicia wasn’t immune to the strange tension that bubbled between the two of them. Six days into the job, she cornered Arthur during their lunch break. “Look,” she said, “I’ve heard the rumours, and I don’t care why the two of you are behaving like schoolchildren. This thing between you and Eames, is it going to affect the job?”
“Of course not,” Arthur rejoined immediately. “We’re professionals.”
Felicia’s answering stare was hard. “I hope you are,” she sighed eventually, equal parts resigned and slightly annoyed, nodding before wandering off.
This strange distance between Eames and him has Arthur constantly on the knife-edge, exhausted and tired and run entirely ragged. He’s lucky, he supposes, that he can still dream and sleep naturally with ease, but when his alarm blares and he rolls out of bed at six every morning, it feels less like he’s had a full night’s sleep and more like he’s completed a mental marathon. There are dark bags under his eyes, purpling bruises of fatigue that refuse to fade, and he has to buckle his belt at a tighter notch now.
He finds Eames at a bar in Ginza, halfway through his third shot of what looks to be whiskey. He slides into the booth next to him, checking the urge to press a light kiss to Eames’s temple.
“Arthur, darling,” Eames beams when he notices him.
The words hit Arthur like a particularly nasty sucker punch, knocking the breath out of him. It’s been a long time (thirteen days, his mind traitorously informs him) since Eames deigned to smile at him, and Arthur misses his easy grin more than he has any right to.
He knows the exact moment that Eames recalls that they aren’t on good terms anymore, watching the smile slide off his face, like a pebble slipping away into an endless ocean, ripples churning and petering out. He feels the loss like an ache in his gut, a festering wound that he knows will never fully heal.
“Eames,” he greets, at a loss for words. He’d prepared an entire spiel on the drive over, the lines lost and tangled now, meaningless and useless.
“What are you doing here?” Eames asks, brittle and hollow. Arthur swallows hard, taking in the way the dim light of the bar shades and highlights the planes of Eames’s face, Arthur’s personal chiaroscuro for this brief window in time.
“You disappeared,” he says. “Ariadne and Felicia were worried.”
Eames downs the double shot of whiskey in his glass in a single mouthful. “And you?” he asks, smile and voice serrated at the edges. “Were you worried about me too?”
“Of course,” Arthur replies, wincing at the plain honesty and creeping desperation he hears in his voice. He clears his throat. “You’re my colleague, and the job is tomorrow - of course I’m worried about you.”
“Of course,” Eames mimics, snorting into his empty glass as he gestures to the waitress for a refill. They sit in silence, Arthur awkward and Eames uncaring, as she brings a new glass of whiskey over to their booth.
Eames nods as she sets the glass down in front of him, clearing his empty one. It is then that Arthur notes the smattering of water marks ringing the wooden surface of the table. He frowns. “How many shots have you had?”
Eames ignores him, instead raising his new glass at Arthur. “A toast to you, pet. You’re a real piece of work.”
Arthur falls silent, unsure of how to proceed. The quiet music of the bar fills the gulf that separates them across the fifteen inches of space between their bodies. If our hearts are never broken, then there’s no joy in the mending, some young hippie band that Arthur has never heard of sings over the tinny speakers. There’s so much this hurt can teach us both. He wants to laugh and cry.
They sit in silence, neither wanting to break this fragile bubble of pretense that they are isolated from the problems of the world, castaways from reality in their tiny booth in a seedy little bar. They are no more than two men happening to share a moment of silence, one with a drink in hand and the other without, two not-strangers and not-quite-friends, stuck in a limbo of their own foolish making.
“Did you love him?” Eames asks, and the illusion is shattered.
Arthur startles, feeling lost. “What?” he sputters, clueless.
“Your - ” Eames waves a hand in the direction of Arthur’s midriff, and understanding dawns in a cold wash of vicious heartache.
“Oh,” Arthur says dumbly, the single syllable falling from his lips like a careless tumble on the sheets, a solitary act of unthinking. “I did,” he answers, because the least he can do is to be honest in this. “I - I do,” he corrects, and everything in him shouts coward, you filthy coward, you can’t even tell Eames that you love him without fucking it up.
Eames knocks the shot back, setting the glass back down on the table with a decisive click. He signals for a refill. When he turns back to face Arthur, there is a ghost of a smile on his lips, derisive and hard-like-diamonds. “Nice to know,” he murmurs over the low chatter of the bar. “What happened, then? Where’s this Prince Charming of yours?”
Arthur finds himself thinking that this is probably the most honest they’ve ever been to each other, and forces himself to continue in the line of this bare truth.
“He didn’t love me,” Arthur says, voice steady and chest hurting. “That’s all there is to it.”
“How fucking fascinating,” Eames replies dryly.
Arthur’s heart is lodged in his throat now, and there is a mortifying burn behind his eyes. “Tell me one thing,” he asks, tone suddenly fervent and urgent. “One thing, and I promise I’ll leave you alone. I won’t look for you for any more jobs, I won’t come aboard any jobs with you already on it. Just - just one thing.” This is as close to all-out begging as he will allow himself to go.
“If I agree to your thing, you won’t try to contact me?” Eames clarifies. “You won’t ever look me up again? You won’t come near me, or try to track me down?”
Biting down on his lip, almost hard enough to draw blood, Arthur nods. “I swear,” he answers, voice pitched low and quiet.
He thought his heart was beyond the point of breaking, and is wearily surprised to discover that it can shatter even further when Eames agrees with little hesitation.
“Your name,” Arthur says. “I want - I want to know your first name. I couldn’t find it when I searched, it isn’t anywhere, not every in death records, and it’s just, I’ve looked for - ”
“Charles,” Eames cuts him off, standing and throwing down several notes onto the table. Arthur watches him, reeling, staring up at Eames’s face, completely obscured by the shadows, and he wants, he needs to -
“Goodbye, Arthur,” he says.
Eames is gone, blindingly yellow shirt and purple corduroys disappearing out the door and into the dark of the Tokyo night. The last glimpse Arthur catches of him is of his face, his beautiful, sinful face tilted up to the inky sky, the red neon signs of seedy establishments lighting his features like a bloody caress, more fleeting and lasting than Arthur’s mark on him ever was.
TBC