(no subject)
Title: Some Wild Darling, part 1
Authors/Artist: Venilia
Team: ROMANCE!
Prompt: Bonds
Word count: 3600
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Brief Eames/OC, little bit of swearing.
SPACE ROMANCE! Beta-ed by the wonderful dialectical. Title taken from Rumi. Part 2 will be up soon.
By the time he’s seven years old Two understands that his family is different. He knows that the Williamses are criminals, that they thieve, forge, hack, grift, and have made an artform of lying. He knows that his family is the best at all of these things, that if you want something expensive and dangerously illegal done perfectly and you’re lucky enough to be in the know, you go to the Williamses.
The Williamses are the first family of Archer V in the Sadalsuud system. Two guesses that made them important. Grandma, who is Prima Archer V, calls their family “landed gentry”. The kids in the village below the House only call him Two when the grownups aren’t there, even though Two plays footie with the boys every Friday and One is head of Williamstown’s gang of girls and has a bitter rivalry with the girls from New Oldham. But as soon as a parent is in sight One and Two are suddenly Miss Williams and Mr. Williams. It’s awkward.
It’s another difference. The village kids have their own first names when they’re born, but all the Williamses are only named Williams. The number is just a placeholder until he chooses a name for himself, and even that isn’t special, it’s just the number after his older sister One.
He also knows most families aren’t as close as his and most extended families live separately rather than on the same grounds. Archer V is only the size of a large moon, but they have a small continent and six islands to spread out on so Two figures it’s yet another Williams thing. But he’s glad, because it means that he has Grandma to teach him how to pick pockets with the bell-covered suit, and Aunt Darcy to teach him about body language and tells. There are also tutors to teach him reading and math and other boring school things. He learns how to ride a horse and self-defence and drawing, and he can take apart a simple planet-bound radio though he isn’t allowed to meddle with the family comms yet. He’s always spoken English and Chinese and French and is learning Italian. On Saturdays he helps his mother cook for the big family meal, and he’s bribed the junior chef into teaching him how to bake. One tried that last year, and got caught. Mum seems to suspect, but there must not be any solid evidence because she looks proud.
He can’t mention most of this to his football friends. There are dozens of rules about what One and Two can and cannot talk about with the other kids, but Two thinks they must have some idea about what his family is anyway. Sometimes their parents talk in hushed voices when they see One or Two. Grandma says that’s a mark of respect. Two thinks it’s kind of lonely.
One and Two spend most of their time with each other, playing Shipwrecked-Pirates-on-a-Planet-with-Maneating-Tigers in the woods, or tagging the air ducts with different colors of string so they won’t get lost when they spy on the adults.
Everything gets interrupted when Grandma finds Aunt Darcy a bride. Almost-Aunt Natalie is the daughter of one of the triadic leaders of the French Territories Thieves’ Guild, and the entire Bonner clan descends on the House like a swarm of very sophisticated bees. Grandma sails around like a queen, ordering flowers and arranging seating. Two’s mother and the head chef trail after her like kite strings. If One or Two are caught standing still they’re given tasks and made to go and ask Aunt Darcy this, that, and twenty other things. It’s hideously boring.
Almost-Aunt Natalie has a cousin around One’s age, but she’s no fun. Cousin Mallorie spends every waking moment looking like she’s at a funeral, sulking, sighing, and glaring at the Williamses. Two thinks she’s being protective, but it’s still rude. None of the Bonners seem very nice. They close ranks around Almost-Aunt Natalie whenever Grandma or Aunt Darcy come near. People pat Almost-Aunt Natalie’s arm a lot.
At least Almost-Aunt Natalie seems nice. Two watches her from the air ducts of the South cottage as she paints her new garden room eggshell-blue. She seems a little sad, but Two would be too if he was moving away from his family. He likes that she sings to herself in heavily accented French as she works, and curses like a deepspace farer when she drips paint on the floor.
It isn’t until after the wedding that Two figures out why cousin Mallorie is so mad: apparently most families didn’t have arranged marriages either.
Two doesn’t know what to think of that.
-------
When Two is nine years old and One is eleven she calls for a family meeting and announces that she’s going to boarding school on Algorab Major, a two-day space skip away. Mum and Dad reply that no, she’s going to secondary school right here on Archer V. One says that she’s already registered, has paid for the school year with her savings, and also her name is Norah now.
Aunt Natalie, who is hugely pregnant and cranky with it, gets a big smile and jumps into the fray with Aunt Darcy right behind her. In the end One-who-is-now-Norah gets to go.
Two misses her like a limb. Two years later, when he’s eleven, he does the same thing. It’s trickier for him because his parents are expecting it, but he charms one of the village girls into using her family comm to send the application and payment in exchange for being taught to ride his horse that summer.
He picks the name Eames.
School is hard and school is wonderful. It doubles the Things to Not Talk About rules. His schoolmates know he’s from a first family, but they think his grandmother runs a charity and his parents are artists. No one knows that his name hasn’t always been Eames. They don’t know that his sweet little planet-bound ship is his first real theft after Aunt Darcy taught him how to jump (she calls it hotwiring, an old term) bounders for this thirteenth birthday. They don’t know that he can read their body language. They don’t know he’s lying to their faces.
It’s oddly freeing. Eames has to catch himself from spinning more and more lies for them to swallow, just to see if he can. He doesn’t because by the time he’s realized how easy it would be he’s already made friends. He doesn’t like to lie to his mates. He’s learned a lot about trust, both how to win it and when to earn it.
Eames takes up boxing. He gets the lead in a school play four times. He finds he likes history, and loves psychology, philosophy, and anything about people. People are interesting.
He’s also learned how to fuck. He likes it, but probably not as much as his schoolmates think. It was fun with Ronny and Khahil, exciting with Geoff who’s a kinky fucker, and then there’s Saleem. Saleem is perfect. He has gorgeous dark hair that Eames has maybe, possibly written very bad and short-lived poetry about one day during a long maths class. Saleem’s smile is slightly crooked and his skin is soft. Sex with Saleem is hot and sweet.
Eames is falling in love.
He isn’t horribly surprised when he gets the family summons a month after his seventeenth birthday. Grandma’s health has been deteriorating for the last year. The faring back is long and his time with his Grandmother is brief. She dies the next afternoon. It’s all strangely quiet and civilized.
“Eames,” Mum says when the family gathers for a very subdued dinner, “We need to talk to you later, sweetheart.”
Eames nods.
The funeral is simple, but crowded. Good thieves live privately and die publicly. All three heads of the French Territories Thieves’ Guild come to pay their respects and heads of other criminal organizations send representatives if they can’t come themselves. A man from the Greater United American Planets in a nondescript suit brings a wreath. From the way everyone else avoids him Eames thinks he must be a Death Student or maybe even a Master, from the underground New York school. People show up quietly, murmur in little groups for a few minutes, put a rose on the coffin, and leave just as quietly.
Eames lingers until Mum catches his eye. The three cooks are done for the day so Eames and his parents have the main house’s kitchen to themselves.
His mothers’ eyes are dry, but red-rimmed. Dad doesn’t sit close to her, but before One was born they’d partnered in the field and years of habitually hiding their marriage trained them into strange ways of expressing affection. Eames is willing to bet his father’s foot is resting against his mother’s under the table. It’s another little way his family is different.
Mum scrubs her hands through her hair, making it pouf into a curly halo. “Eames, Grandma was against you carrying on the tradition.”
Eames heart dives. “I’m a good thief-” he starts to say, but Dad lays a hand on Mum’s shoulder and when she raises her head she sees the panic on his face. “Oh sweetheart, not that tradition. Of course you’ll be a thief. You’ll be brilliant.”
Eames blows out a breath, suddenly sick with relief.
“You know your mother and I met at our wedding arrangement,” Dad says. Eames starts to have a feel for where this is going.
“I’d worked with your grandma on the Harrington heist and she approached me with the idea. I was chuffed. Probably should have been panicked, talking to your grandmother about her baby girl. But that the Williamses would consider a loner like me for their eldest daughter was, well, it was something.”
Eames nods along. They’ve never told him the story directly before, but he’s picked up bits and pieces.
“And then I met her. I’d been thinking of it like a business arrangement until then and all of the sudden there was this real person in front of me, and she was nice, too. And pretty. And sometimes she even manages funny.”
Eames rolls his eyes. Mum’s sense of humor is horrible.
“I didn’t know her yet,” Dad continues, “but I knew who she was and I knew she was willing to be my partner. In the end it was a lot like any other partnership, that way.”
“The point is,” Mum breaks in, “that Grandma didn’t want the tradition for you. She said maybe your sister could go through with an arranged marriage. You could marry for love.”
“Why me?” Eames asks. He can’t remember his grandmother ever saying a word against arranged marriages.
Mum shifts on her seat to look at Dad. They exchange eyebrow frowns and pointed looks until Mum loses the battle.
“She thought Norah was made of tough stuff, but you’re too much of a romantic at heart.”
“Bridget!” Dad says, as Eames bursts out, “What the fuck?”
“What? That’s what she meant. She was my mother, you know,” Mum says. She looks tired. He forgives her with a squeeze of her hand. She apologizes by squeezing back.
“Being a romantic isn’t a bad thing,” she says. “And we both know you’re made of tougher stuff than she thought. You’re even tougher than you think. I can see it.”
Eames sits quietly for a moment, taking that in, figuring out what his mother means. His thoughts turn to Norah, who has a boyfriend right now. He’s not even a criminal, just a boy from her uni. He’s her first real boyfriend so it probably won’t last, but his existence means that Norah isn’t thinking about arranged marriages. She wants to fall in love.
“So... Grandma wanted you to tell me this, yeah? But,” he looks carefully at his parents, testing their reactions, “but you don’t want to ask me.” Their faces said he’d got it right. “Because, because what? Your marriage is happy? You do realize you’re lucky there, don’t you?”
“Oh Eames, we know what we’re asking you,” Mum says. “But you know why we’re asking you. Our family is the best, but we’re small and our connections are ninety percent favors. We have to stay small to not be swallowed up by syndicates or mafias or guilds. We need a good marriage to a good family. You don’t remember how hard we worked before Darcy’s marriage or how many good jobs we had to turn down.” His mother is looking into his eyes, trying to get her feelings across.
Eames sits back in his chair. Aunt Darcy’s marriage has brought them not only connections and protection in the French Territories and even some of the Greater United Americas, it’s got their foot into the door of dreamsharing heists, something Eames is particularly interested in. Aunt Natalie’s mopey cousin and her father were rumored to be making strides in the field. Eames could call on their relationship with Aunt Natalie when he was ready. He’s already got feelers out for access to a PASIV.
Yeah, he understands.
Outside the airy kitchen, birds are making a fuss over the last, overripe fruit on the apple tree. His sister’s probably dyeing her hair again, as she does whenever life changes on her. His little cousins are around somewhere and his aunts as well. The aunts probably knew what his parents were asking him, had probably weighed in their own opinions.
Somewhere roughly up and to his left and about twelve skips away, Saleem’s eating or maybe sleeping. He might be laughing. He might be laughing with another boy. He might not be. Eames would guess not.
“I need to think about it,” he says.
He goes to Aunt Natalie’s garden room. She isn’t there, so he pulls off his socks and shoes and rolls up his trousers to rest his feet in the wading pool. It’s a little cool, but being a little cool sometimes helps him think. He closes his eyes and listens to the little lip-lip of the water against the stone and the vague scent of the water lilies whose vines were tangled between his left toes. The sun warms his back through the bay windows.
The room is orange with sunset when Aunt Natalie finally finds him.
“They’ve asked you,” she says. She slips off her impractical heels and sits next to him.
“Yes.”
There’s silence before she asks, “And what do you think, Williams?”
Aunt Natalie is the only one who calls them by their proper names, but she only does it when she’s being serious.
“I don’t know what to think. I mean, I always assumed as a kid. But that was before school.”
“Ah? You have a boy?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I might.”
She knocks her shoulder against his. “Is he pretty?”
Eames smiles for a moment and then sighs.
“It doesn’t matter, does it? I can’t ask him to, to wait around until. I don’t even know until what? Until I’m picking colors for my own wedding? Am I supposed to ask him to be my secret lover? Or say I hit the lottery and fall in love with my spouse. I’m supposed to tell Saleem, ‘So sorry. No hard feelings?’”
Aunt Natalie sits through until he’s done. “Before your Grandmother talked to my father, I had a lover.”
He turns to stare at her. She shrugs delicately, her dark eyes shameless and a little amused.
“He was a captain on a farer we’d used many times for smuggling. I hadn’t told anyone, not even my sister. I thought maybe we could be something special together.”
The water’s icy now. Aunt Natalie pulls her feet out and uses one of Eames’ socks for a towel. He follows suit.
“But when word came out that the Williamses had approached my father’s organization for a wife for her daughter, I volunteered. Do you know why, Williams?”
He shakes his head. He thinks he knows, but he doesn’t want that to be the answer. He wants the lover to have cheated on her or have died. Or maybe Aunt Natalie realized that she could only have a long-term romance with a woman. Or he could have botched a shipment and run away from the consequences.
But those aren’t why and knows it. She’s called him by his one real name because in the end that’s what he is: a Williams.
“Yes, you know why. But I will say it anyway for you to hear it: I volunteered because my family needed me to. My father’s partners had only sons. I had a half-sister, but she was in love. I had a little cousin, but she was too young. There was only me. So I said, ‘Father, please consider me,’ and now I am married to a beautiful English woman with an exotic accent and a large heart. Together we have two terrible brats and a cat. This is my home now, here with Darcy, Three, and Four. I would never leave.”
“That’s not-” Eames clears his throat. “That’s not how every arranged marriage goes, Aunt Natalie.”
She laughs. It’s a little abrupt after such a somber day. “Oh Eames, that is not how every marriage goes anywhere, no matter how it comes to be. Love is what you make of it, and how hard you work on it, and how much you want it. Look at me, cher. Romance and love are not often the same. Romance can be chance, but love is desiring even when to desire is foolish.”
Eames swallows, his mouth dry. “So, so you’re saying you married for love.”
“Yes, for love of my family I married. And then I found love in my marriage. This boy of yours - do you suffer for him? Do you wonder why you’re so stupid as to love him, but love him anyway because that is the answer?”
Eames thinks about Saleem. “Well, no, not until now.”
She sighs sadly and pulls his head against her breasts. If he liked women it would have been awkward. “Poor boy. Here’s the curse of love: you’ll do what’s best for him.”
“Yeah,” Eames says. He knows what his answer will be. He rests there a moment, wondering if he can cry. It doesn’t happen for so long he gives up on the idea, and then it’s there, a hot sting of tears and the taste of salt in this throat. He sobs twice, but before he can really cry it’s over. He’s calm again.
Aunt Natalie uses her sleeve to wipe his face, though it’s mostly dry. “You have a big heart, Eames. I don’t think you’ll lack for love.”
He laughs and it only feels a little awkward. “What happened to ‘love is a curse’? Awful thing to say after that.”
She rubs his back softly in answer. She stands to smooth down her dress and long hair. Then she picks up her shoes and walks out, flicking on the lights as she leaves so that the room goes from private and safe to bright and common.
Right. Time to get on with life.
-------
He goes to university for a psychology degree and stays an extra year to change his art minor to a major, finishing with a double degree. He goes straight from school to the army, where he spends three years on a muddy boondock planet learning to shoot increasingly deadly weapons at increasingly indistinguishable people, and comes out knowing exactly how dangerous he can be.
It’s a relief to come back to civilization. He works theatre for a while, then gives up stage acting for grifting and stays on top of grifting to perfect his pet project: dream forging.
There are other forgers. There are other forgers who can bend their gender and other forgers who know not only how to act but how to grift, to see what a mark wants and draw it out, unmaking them like unraveling one of the long scarves that are popular at uni.
But inexperience and youth aside, Eames already knows he’s one of the best forgers. He’s the only one who can both grift and change his gender seamlessly. It’s natural to him. Duck to water.
After school and the army, and then a grueling if self-taught time learning to forge, Eames drifts a little. He used to love time off, the non-demands of an unscheduled life. Now he finds himself at loose ends quicker than he’s like to admit. After a month of doing absolutely nothing, Eames mans up and comms Aunt Natalie’s cousin Mallorie.
Authors/Artist: Venilia
Team: ROMANCE!
Prompt: Bonds
Word count: 3600
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Brief Eames/OC, little bit of swearing.
SPACE ROMANCE! Beta-ed by the wonderful dialectical. Title taken from Rumi. Part 2 will be up soon.
By the time he’s seven years old Two understands that his family is different. He knows that the Williamses are criminals, that they thieve, forge, hack, grift, and have made an artform of lying. He knows that his family is the best at all of these things, that if you want something expensive and dangerously illegal done perfectly and you’re lucky enough to be in the know, you go to the Williamses.
The Williamses are the first family of Archer V in the Sadalsuud system. Two guesses that made them important. Grandma, who is Prima Archer V, calls their family “landed gentry”. The kids in the village below the House only call him Two when the grownups aren’t there, even though Two plays footie with the boys every Friday and One is head of Williamstown’s gang of girls and has a bitter rivalry with the girls from New Oldham. But as soon as a parent is in sight One and Two are suddenly Miss Williams and Mr. Williams. It’s awkward.
It’s another difference. The village kids have their own first names when they’re born, but all the Williamses are only named Williams. The number is just a placeholder until he chooses a name for himself, and even that isn’t special, it’s just the number after his older sister One.
He also knows most families aren’t as close as his and most extended families live separately rather than on the same grounds. Archer V is only the size of a large moon, but they have a small continent and six islands to spread out on so Two figures it’s yet another Williams thing. But he’s glad, because it means that he has Grandma to teach him how to pick pockets with the bell-covered suit, and Aunt Darcy to teach him about body language and tells. There are also tutors to teach him reading and math and other boring school things. He learns how to ride a horse and self-defence and drawing, and he can take apart a simple planet-bound radio though he isn’t allowed to meddle with the family comms yet. He’s always spoken English and Chinese and French and is learning Italian. On Saturdays he helps his mother cook for the big family meal, and he’s bribed the junior chef into teaching him how to bake. One tried that last year, and got caught. Mum seems to suspect, but there must not be any solid evidence because she looks proud.
He can’t mention most of this to his football friends. There are dozens of rules about what One and Two can and cannot talk about with the other kids, but Two thinks they must have some idea about what his family is anyway. Sometimes their parents talk in hushed voices when they see One or Two. Grandma says that’s a mark of respect. Two thinks it’s kind of lonely.
One and Two spend most of their time with each other, playing Shipwrecked-Pirates-on-a-Planet-with-Maneating-Tigers in the woods, or tagging the air ducts with different colors of string so they won’t get lost when they spy on the adults.
Everything gets interrupted when Grandma finds Aunt Darcy a bride. Almost-Aunt Natalie is the daughter of one of the triadic leaders of the French Territories Thieves’ Guild, and the entire Bonner clan descends on the House like a swarm of very sophisticated bees. Grandma sails around like a queen, ordering flowers and arranging seating. Two’s mother and the head chef trail after her like kite strings. If One or Two are caught standing still they’re given tasks and made to go and ask Aunt Darcy this, that, and twenty other things. It’s hideously boring.
Almost-Aunt Natalie has a cousin around One’s age, but she’s no fun. Cousin Mallorie spends every waking moment looking like she’s at a funeral, sulking, sighing, and glaring at the Williamses. Two thinks she’s being protective, but it’s still rude. None of the Bonners seem very nice. They close ranks around Almost-Aunt Natalie whenever Grandma or Aunt Darcy come near. People pat Almost-Aunt Natalie’s arm a lot.
At least Almost-Aunt Natalie seems nice. Two watches her from the air ducts of the South cottage as she paints her new garden room eggshell-blue. She seems a little sad, but Two would be too if he was moving away from his family. He likes that she sings to herself in heavily accented French as she works, and curses like a deepspace farer when she drips paint on the floor.
It isn’t until after the wedding that Two figures out why cousin Mallorie is so mad: apparently most families didn’t have arranged marriages either.
Two doesn’t know what to think of that.
-------
When Two is nine years old and One is eleven she calls for a family meeting and announces that she’s going to boarding school on Algorab Major, a two-day space skip away. Mum and Dad reply that no, she’s going to secondary school right here on Archer V. One says that she’s already registered, has paid for the school year with her savings, and also her name is Norah now.
Aunt Natalie, who is hugely pregnant and cranky with it, gets a big smile and jumps into the fray with Aunt Darcy right behind her. In the end One-who-is-now-Norah gets to go.
Two misses her like a limb. Two years later, when he’s eleven, he does the same thing. It’s trickier for him because his parents are expecting it, but he charms one of the village girls into using her family comm to send the application and payment in exchange for being taught to ride his horse that summer.
He picks the name Eames.
School is hard and school is wonderful. It doubles the Things to Not Talk About rules. His schoolmates know he’s from a first family, but they think his grandmother runs a charity and his parents are artists. No one knows that his name hasn’t always been Eames. They don’t know that his sweet little planet-bound ship is his first real theft after Aunt Darcy taught him how to jump (she calls it hotwiring, an old term) bounders for this thirteenth birthday. They don’t know that he can read their body language. They don’t know he’s lying to their faces.
It’s oddly freeing. Eames has to catch himself from spinning more and more lies for them to swallow, just to see if he can. He doesn’t because by the time he’s realized how easy it would be he’s already made friends. He doesn’t like to lie to his mates. He’s learned a lot about trust, both how to win it and when to earn it.
Eames takes up boxing. He gets the lead in a school play four times. He finds he likes history, and loves psychology, philosophy, and anything about people. People are interesting.
He’s also learned how to fuck. He likes it, but probably not as much as his schoolmates think. It was fun with Ronny and Khahil, exciting with Geoff who’s a kinky fucker, and then there’s Saleem. Saleem is perfect. He has gorgeous dark hair that Eames has maybe, possibly written very bad and short-lived poetry about one day during a long maths class. Saleem’s smile is slightly crooked and his skin is soft. Sex with Saleem is hot and sweet.
Eames is falling in love.
He isn’t horribly surprised when he gets the family summons a month after his seventeenth birthday. Grandma’s health has been deteriorating for the last year. The faring back is long and his time with his Grandmother is brief. She dies the next afternoon. It’s all strangely quiet and civilized.
“Eames,” Mum says when the family gathers for a very subdued dinner, “We need to talk to you later, sweetheart.”
Eames nods.
The funeral is simple, but crowded. Good thieves live privately and die publicly. All three heads of the French Territories Thieves’ Guild come to pay their respects and heads of other criminal organizations send representatives if they can’t come themselves. A man from the Greater United American Planets in a nondescript suit brings a wreath. From the way everyone else avoids him Eames thinks he must be a Death Student or maybe even a Master, from the underground New York school. People show up quietly, murmur in little groups for a few minutes, put a rose on the coffin, and leave just as quietly.
Eames lingers until Mum catches his eye. The three cooks are done for the day so Eames and his parents have the main house’s kitchen to themselves.
His mothers’ eyes are dry, but red-rimmed. Dad doesn’t sit close to her, but before One was born they’d partnered in the field and years of habitually hiding their marriage trained them into strange ways of expressing affection. Eames is willing to bet his father’s foot is resting against his mother’s under the table. It’s another little way his family is different.
Mum scrubs her hands through her hair, making it pouf into a curly halo. “Eames, Grandma was against you carrying on the tradition.”
Eames heart dives. “I’m a good thief-” he starts to say, but Dad lays a hand on Mum’s shoulder and when she raises her head she sees the panic on his face. “Oh sweetheart, not that tradition. Of course you’ll be a thief. You’ll be brilliant.”
Eames blows out a breath, suddenly sick with relief.
“You know your mother and I met at our wedding arrangement,” Dad says. Eames starts to have a feel for where this is going.
“I’d worked with your grandma on the Harrington heist and she approached me with the idea. I was chuffed. Probably should have been panicked, talking to your grandmother about her baby girl. But that the Williamses would consider a loner like me for their eldest daughter was, well, it was something.”
Eames nods along. They’ve never told him the story directly before, but he’s picked up bits and pieces.
“And then I met her. I’d been thinking of it like a business arrangement until then and all of the sudden there was this real person in front of me, and she was nice, too. And pretty. And sometimes she even manages funny.”
Eames rolls his eyes. Mum’s sense of humor is horrible.
“I didn’t know her yet,” Dad continues, “but I knew who she was and I knew she was willing to be my partner. In the end it was a lot like any other partnership, that way.”
“The point is,” Mum breaks in, “that Grandma didn’t want the tradition for you. She said maybe your sister could go through with an arranged marriage. You could marry for love.”
“Why me?” Eames asks. He can’t remember his grandmother ever saying a word against arranged marriages.
Mum shifts on her seat to look at Dad. They exchange eyebrow frowns and pointed looks until Mum loses the battle.
“She thought Norah was made of tough stuff, but you’re too much of a romantic at heart.”
“Bridget!” Dad says, as Eames bursts out, “What the fuck?”
“What? That’s what she meant. She was my mother, you know,” Mum says. She looks tired. He forgives her with a squeeze of her hand. She apologizes by squeezing back.
“Being a romantic isn’t a bad thing,” she says. “And we both know you’re made of tougher stuff than she thought. You’re even tougher than you think. I can see it.”
Eames sits quietly for a moment, taking that in, figuring out what his mother means. His thoughts turn to Norah, who has a boyfriend right now. He’s not even a criminal, just a boy from her uni. He’s her first real boyfriend so it probably won’t last, but his existence means that Norah isn’t thinking about arranged marriages. She wants to fall in love.
“So... Grandma wanted you to tell me this, yeah? But,” he looks carefully at his parents, testing their reactions, “but you don’t want to ask me.” Their faces said he’d got it right. “Because, because what? Your marriage is happy? You do realize you’re lucky there, don’t you?”
“Oh Eames, we know what we’re asking you,” Mum says. “But you know why we’re asking you. Our family is the best, but we’re small and our connections are ninety percent favors. We have to stay small to not be swallowed up by syndicates or mafias or guilds. We need a good marriage to a good family. You don’t remember how hard we worked before Darcy’s marriage or how many good jobs we had to turn down.” His mother is looking into his eyes, trying to get her feelings across.
Eames sits back in his chair. Aunt Darcy’s marriage has brought them not only connections and protection in the French Territories and even some of the Greater United Americas, it’s got their foot into the door of dreamsharing heists, something Eames is particularly interested in. Aunt Natalie’s mopey cousin and her father were rumored to be making strides in the field. Eames could call on their relationship with Aunt Natalie when he was ready. He’s already got feelers out for access to a PASIV.
Yeah, he understands.
Outside the airy kitchen, birds are making a fuss over the last, overripe fruit on the apple tree. His sister’s probably dyeing her hair again, as she does whenever life changes on her. His little cousins are around somewhere and his aunts as well. The aunts probably knew what his parents were asking him, had probably weighed in their own opinions.
Somewhere roughly up and to his left and about twelve skips away, Saleem’s eating or maybe sleeping. He might be laughing. He might be laughing with another boy. He might not be. Eames would guess not.
“I need to think about it,” he says.
He goes to Aunt Natalie’s garden room. She isn’t there, so he pulls off his socks and shoes and rolls up his trousers to rest his feet in the wading pool. It’s a little cool, but being a little cool sometimes helps him think. He closes his eyes and listens to the little lip-lip of the water against the stone and the vague scent of the water lilies whose vines were tangled between his left toes. The sun warms his back through the bay windows.
The room is orange with sunset when Aunt Natalie finally finds him.
“They’ve asked you,” she says. She slips off her impractical heels and sits next to him.
“Yes.”
There’s silence before she asks, “And what do you think, Williams?”
Aunt Natalie is the only one who calls them by their proper names, but she only does it when she’s being serious.
“I don’t know what to think. I mean, I always assumed as a kid. But that was before school.”
“Ah? You have a boy?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I might.”
She knocks her shoulder against his. “Is he pretty?”
Eames smiles for a moment and then sighs.
“It doesn’t matter, does it? I can’t ask him to, to wait around until. I don’t even know until what? Until I’m picking colors for my own wedding? Am I supposed to ask him to be my secret lover? Or say I hit the lottery and fall in love with my spouse. I’m supposed to tell Saleem, ‘So sorry. No hard feelings?’”
Aunt Natalie sits through until he’s done. “Before your Grandmother talked to my father, I had a lover.”
He turns to stare at her. She shrugs delicately, her dark eyes shameless and a little amused.
“He was a captain on a farer we’d used many times for smuggling. I hadn’t told anyone, not even my sister. I thought maybe we could be something special together.”
The water’s icy now. Aunt Natalie pulls her feet out and uses one of Eames’ socks for a towel. He follows suit.
“But when word came out that the Williamses had approached my father’s organization for a wife for her daughter, I volunteered. Do you know why, Williams?”
He shakes his head. He thinks he knows, but he doesn’t want that to be the answer. He wants the lover to have cheated on her or have died. Or maybe Aunt Natalie realized that she could only have a long-term romance with a woman. Or he could have botched a shipment and run away from the consequences.
But those aren’t why and knows it. She’s called him by his one real name because in the end that’s what he is: a Williams.
“Yes, you know why. But I will say it anyway for you to hear it: I volunteered because my family needed me to. My father’s partners had only sons. I had a half-sister, but she was in love. I had a little cousin, but she was too young. There was only me. So I said, ‘Father, please consider me,’ and now I am married to a beautiful English woman with an exotic accent and a large heart. Together we have two terrible brats and a cat. This is my home now, here with Darcy, Three, and Four. I would never leave.”
“That’s not-” Eames clears his throat. “That’s not how every arranged marriage goes, Aunt Natalie.”
She laughs. It’s a little abrupt after such a somber day. “Oh Eames, that is not how every marriage goes anywhere, no matter how it comes to be. Love is what you make of it, and how hard you work on it, and how much you want it. Look at me, cher. Romance and love are not often the same. Romance can be chance, but love is desiring even when to desire is foolish.”
Eames swallows, his mouth dry. “So, so you’re saying you married for love.”
“Yes, for love of my family I married. And then I found love in my marriage. This boy of yours - do you suffer for him? Do you wonder why you’re so stupid as to love him, but love him anyway because that is the answer?”
Eames thinks about Saleem. “Well, no, not until now.”
She sighs sadly and pulls his head against her breasts. If he liked women it would have been awkward. “Poor boy. Here’s the curse of love: you’ll do what’s best for him.”
“Yeah,” Eames says. He knows what his answer will be. He rests there a moment, wondering if he can cry. It doesn’t happen for so long he gives up on the idea, and then it’s there, a hot sting of tears and the taste of salt in this throat. He sobs twice, but before he can really cry it’s over. He’s calm again.
Aunt Natalie uses her sleeve to wipe his face, though it’s mostly dry. “You have a big heart, Eames. I don’t think you’ll lack for love.”
He laughs and it only feels a little awkward. “What happened to ‘love is a curse’? Awful thing to say after that.”
She rubs his back softly in answer. She stands to smooth down her dress and long hair. Then she picks up her shoes and walks out, flicking on the lights as she leaves so that the room goes from private and safe to bright and common.
Right. Time to get on with life.
-------
He goes to university for a psychology degree and stays an extra year to change his art minor to a major, finishing with a double degree. He goes straight from school to the army, where he spends three years on a muddy boondock planet learning to shoot increasingly deadly weapons at increasingly indistinguishable people, and comes out knowing exactly how dangerous he can be.
It’s a relief to come back to civilization. He works theatre for a while, then gives up stage acting for grifting and stays on top of grifting to perfect his pet project: dream forging.
There are other forgers. There are other forgers who can bend their gender and other forgers who know not only how to act but how to grift, to see what a mark wants and draw it out, unmaking them like unraveling one of the long scarves that are popular at uni.
But inexperience and youth aside, Eames already knows he’s one of the best forgers. He’s the only one who can both grift and change his gender seamlessly. It’s natural to him. Duck to water.
After school and the army, and then a grueling if self-taught time learning to forge, Eames drifts a little. He used to love time off, the non-demands of an unscheduled life. Now he finds himself at loose ends quicker than he’s like to admit. After a month of doing absolutely nothing, Eames mans up and comms Aunt Natalie’s cousin Mallorie.