Fic: The Physiological Response to Absurdity [PG-13]
Title: The Physiological Response to Absurdity
Author: starlingthefool
Artist: red_rahl
Team: ROMANCE
Prompt: Devotion, innocence
Word count: 5691
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: Crossover with Calvin and Hobbes. Mentions of character death, grief, discussions about fatalism and existentialism, and some shmoopy-ass romance.
Summary:
Calvin: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?
Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.
Calvin: I can't tell if that's funny or really scary.
Notes: This is a sequel to Lions and Tigers, which is a crossover with Calvin & Hobbes, and this would definitely make more sense if you read that first. A billion thanks to red_rahl who is fabulous and drew the art in like A DAY. Thanks also to gelbwax, who kicked my ass into gear while I was whining about it, and to gollumgollum, who beta’d and cried about baby raccoons with me.
+++
Eames is about two-thirds of the way asleep when Arthur, who’s spooned up against his back, pushes his nose against the nape of Eames’ neck and sleepily mutters, “I love you.”
Eames snaps back into frozen wakefulness, the kind familiar to anyone who has to worry about getting shot in the face as part of their job. He spends a few terrible minutes trying to figure out how to respond, and then realizes that Arthur is already snoring.
Eames does not sleep well that night.
+++
Early the next morning, Arthur leaves for a two-week job in Chicago. It’s barely past dawn, and Eames lies in bed (not their bed, just the bed) listening to Arthur shower, shave, and mutter curses at various pieces of furniture that trip him up. When he comes back in, smelling of aftershave and toothpaste and coffee, Eames lets his eyes slip shut, pretending to be mostly-asleep (which is far easier to fake than totally-asleep). Though he feels nearly ill with dread, Arthur does not say the three words again. He just kisses Eames soundly, lets out a sigh that is both soft and fond, then picks up his bag and walks out.
Eames listens to Arthur’s steps as they echo down the hallway, the slam of the door to the stairwell, and waits. He pictures Arthur running back, throwing open the door to the apartment (not their apartment, just an apartment that they happen to have co-signed the lease on; it’s not like they used their real names or anything), and declaring his love for Eames in a suitably dramatic way. Eames can imagine the way Arthur will turn red, the frantic look in his eyes as he sputters out the words that he let slip so incautiously the night before. Or maybe he’ll look stoic, like he’s about to appear in front of a firing squad, taking a deep breath and saying the words in an even, unafraid voice.
Nothing happens. Eames waits for ten minutes before pulling out the spare PASIV he keeps in the linen closet. He needs to have a heart-to-heart with Hobbes.
“Arthur’s rubbing off on you,” the tiger says critically, eyeing the bland hotel room that Eames has dreamed them into. “What are we doing in a Marriot?”
It’s a sign of Eames’ distress that he doesn’t even joke about Hobbes’ use of the phrase rubbing off. “I need your advice,” he says instead.
“This is boring,” Hobbes says. “Let’s go outside.”
“I’m serious here.”
“So am I. There’s no reason for us to be inside a boring hotel room when we could be anywhere else in the universe.”
Eames has to concede the point, and they soon find themselves on a grassy path in a forest, surrounded tall beeches and elms and maples.
“He loves me,” Eames says, shoving his hands in his pocket.
“Yup.” Hobbes does not sound at all surprised.
“Yup?” Eames says indignantly. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
“It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that he loves you.”
“Not to me!”
“Which proves my point entirely.”
+++
For years, Calvin was convinced that his dad wasn’t actually dead. He’d been abducted by evil Zogwargs from Neptune. He’d fallen into a wormhole, and was living as a freedom fighter/airship captain elsewhere on the space-time continuum. The mafia was after him over some kind of patent infringement deal gone bad, and he’d had to go into Witness Protection. Calvin liked the last scenario the best, because it explained why he and his mom had to leave Ohio and come to Leeds, which was pretty much the worst place on the planet.
Everything that had been bad about his life before was worse. Their house was smaller and colder, the weather was rainier, the kids were meaner, school was miserable-er, and there were no woods or hillsides or gravel pits, no place to escape. Except for the inside of his head, of course. He’d always enjoyed being other people; Spiff or Stupendous Man or whoever. Now that being Calvin was such a miserable experience, it was easier than ever to slip into someone else’s life for a few hours.
“Calvin, you need to get your head out of the clouds,” his mother said. “You’re smarter than this-”
This being another failed test, this time in history.
“It’s not my fault!” he protested. (That wasn’t true: he hadn’t studied, because the War of the Roses was boring. Why couldn’t they give him tests on things like pirate republics or the Pleistocene era?)
“Calvin, you’re eleven years old.” She sounded tired and disappointed, like she always did. He missed the days when she would just get angry with him. “You need to start taking some responsibility for your actions.”
“I hate it here!” he said suddenly. And even though he’d said the words a hundred times before, he’d never meant them quite so vehemently. Anger was prickling along his skin, like ants swarming along the branches of a tree. “Why did we have to move here? Why did we have to leave?”
His mom put a hand to her eyes, squeezing at her temples. “We’ve been over this-”
“Our apartment is awful, my teachers hate me, the kids at school are morons, and the weather sucks. Why can’t we go home?”
“Enough, Calvin. I know it’s hard, but we both have to make the best of it.”
Then it slipped out: “Dad’s never going to find us here!”
The second the words were out of his mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake. Not just because his mother was looking at him with fresh grief staining her eyes, but because giving voice to his secret belief - that Dad was okay, even if he had been kidnapped by aliens or was hiding from gangsters - made him instantly realize how ridiculous it was. His dad was dead. Full stop.
Calvin sprinted out of the kitchen and into his room, slamming the door shut. He could feel something brewing in him, something fierce and terrible and enraged.
“Hey,” Hobbes said, from the bed. “What are you-”
Calvin took a book from his desk and hurled it at the wall, relishing the bang when it hit. He threw another, then another. He tore the drawings off his wall, ripping them up and throwing the pieces onto the floor. He was about to pick up the framed picture of the four of them - Mom and Dad, him, and Hobbes - and throw it out the window when Hobbes tackled him. They fought for a while, destroying the room even more, until they were both exhausted and panting.
“He’s not in Witness Protection,” Calvin said, staring up at his ceiling. “He wasn’t abducted by aliens.”
“I know,” Hobbes said.
“He’s not coming back.”
“I know,” Hobbes said again.
Calvin could feel nothing but seething anger, that his best friend had let him believe a lie for so long.
+++
“He thought I was asleep!” Eames says indignantly, kicking a stone. It flies into a tree with a satisfying thwack. “Who the hell tells someone they love them when they’re not even conscious?”
“Maybe someone who has an inkling as to how much you would freak out,” Hobbes says. He bounds ahead to a narrow stream, drinking from it. Eames follows, crouching down next to him, and stares at their wavering reflections in the water.
“Or someone too cowardly to say it when I’m awake,” he points out.
“Does Arthur strike you as a coward?” Hobbes says, sitting down.
Eames collapses next to him. He dislodges another stone from the dirt and tosses it into the water, trying to think of a way to answer that doesn’t make him sound like an idiot.
“Me neither,” Hobbes says.
+++
It was an oddly gradual process, the way Hobbes faded out of his life. Calvin simply stopped looking for him to be there. He stopped looking for anything outside of himself, content to stay in the boundaries of his own adolescent misery.
He started to chase thrills, because there was nothing else worth doing. Skipping school. Stealing from the shops on the High Street. Smoking cigarettes. Lying - he’d always been inventive, but he honed his skills in fabrication to an art.
When he finally went through a growth spurt, growing about five inches and putting on two stone over the course of a summer, he stopped taking shit from the bullies that had been tailing him since they’d moved there. The teachers had mostly given up on him at this point. He was still the mad kid at school, but now people mostly left him alone. He had friends, of a sort; the bad sort, he knew, disloyal and conniving, but they helped fill the days.
His feet were on the ground at last, dragging against the permanently wet pavement.
If his life was all a wash of gray, though, then his dreams were technicolor pulp-art, lurid adventures, slick nightmares of saturated colors. He always woke violently, thrust into consciousness covered in sweat and with his heart pounding painfully against his ribs. He realized, sometime around sixteen, that he was missing something, that there was an empty space in his life that used to be filled, but couldn’t remember what.
+++
“Why now?” Eames asks. “What does it mean?”
“It means he loves you, you nincompoop.”
“Nobody makes a declaration of love without any expectations. They don’t just say it to have it be said. That’s not how it works.”
“Then how does it work, smarty-pants?”
Eames makes a face. “People say that they love you because they want something.”
“I refuse to believe that you’re that cynical.”
“I’m that cynical and then some, thank you,” Eames says primly. He stands and dusts himself off. “I’m a conman, I’m a manipulative bastard, and I know what makes people tick. Nobody says I love you without expecting something in return.”
Hobbes looks distinctly unimpressed. “Do you love him?” he asks.
“That is not at issue here!” Eames yells, and stomps off.
“Oh my god,” Hobbes says, laughing at him. “You do.”
“Piss off!
Eames gets only a few feet away before a blow between his shoulder blades knocks him into the dirt. Hobbes has always been bigger than him, that’s just how it works, and has always been capable of pinning Eames effortlessly. He does so now, with paws the size of dinner plates planted firmly on Eames’ shoulders.
“Get off me, fleabag!”
“You’re gooey in love with him, aren’t you?” Hobbes crows. “I bet you’re writing him MASH notes and sparkly Valentines and terrible poetry.”
“I haven’t written a MASH note since I was seven years old, you ass.”
“Arthur and Eames, sitting in a tree, kay-eye-ess-ess-”
“Shut it!”
“Have you compared him to a summer’s day, yet?”
No, he bloody well hasn’t. If anything, Arthur is a spring day; a wakeful wind that stirs electric-green leaves, the smell of earth, sunlight that soothes the ache of a long winter-
Oh. Bollocks.
“Told you,” Hobbes growls.
+++
The first time Calvin Jasper Eames tried dreamsharing was the morning of his seventeenth birthday. He was spending the summer hols at his friend’s parents’ flat in Manchester. His mother had agreed to the idea, Calvin thought, with something like relief.
He wasn’t entirely fond of the friend in question, David. Calvin thought he was a spoiled, backstabbing weasel, actually, but he liked Calvin, and kept him around like a mascot, buying his friendship with booze, pot, and X. And occasionally, with something more.
David pestered him until Calvin dragged his carcass out of bed, and together, they caught a bus to the city centre, getting off near Canal Street.
“God, you didn’t get me a blowjob from a gay hooker, did you?” Calvin asked.
David laughed. “Maybe for your next birthday.”
They finally stopped in front of a graffiti’d metal door that was sandwiched in between a closed kebab shop and an empty Poundland.
“It’s me!” David shouted. “I brought my plus one.”
“What am I, your date to the orgy?” Calvin said.
“You wish, Eames,” David scoffed.
(Actually, he wishes, Calvin thought. Behind the bluster, behind the slurs and the stupid machismo and the tendency to call Calvin by his last name, David wanted him. Calvin knew, but didn’t really care one way or another at this point.)
The door opened, and a skinny Indian guy looked out, glancing down the street before settling his gaze on the two of them. “You have the money?” he asked. There was a trace of an accent there, but not much of one.
David scoffed. “Of course.”
“Same deal,” the man said, putting his palm out. “Half upfront, half after.”
David pulled out a small bundle of cash and handed it over. The man flipped through it quickly, then allowed them inside. Calvin followed David up a flight of narrow stairs that reeked of Dettol and piss, into an apartment that reeked of Dettol and weed.
“Is this his first time?” the Indian guy asked.
“It is,” David said, before Calvin could open his mouth.
“You’ll go under separately, then,” the guy said, as he led them into an dark room, where heavy curtains blocked most of the light.
“What? But I wanted to-”
“Those are my rules,” the guy said. “I can’t let two green dreamers go under together, it’ll be a miracle if you don’t crack open your minds like eggs.”
None of this made any sense to Calvin, though it did make him a little nervous. David and the other guy continued to argue for a while, until David finally threw up his hands and collapsed down on one of the couches. Calvin recognized the beginning of a massive sulk session, knew he wouldn’t get more than a monosyllabic answer out of David for another hour at least, so he turned back to the Indian man.
“Look, what is this? Dav’s told me fuck all about what we’re doing here.”
“Take a seat,” the other man said, nodding towards the empty couch. When Calvin was seated, he squatted down in front of a banged-up coffee table with a big plastic case on it, and opened it up. There was some kind of complicated piece of machinery in there.
“You ever had a dream that you could control?” he asked.
The question made Calvin uncomfortable, for reasons he wasn’t really up to analyzing. It seemed like his dreams more often controlled him.
The man either didn’t see or ignored the ambivalence on Calvin’s face. “Well, this is even better. Give me your hand.”
Calvin did, against his better instincts. The other man pulled an IV out from the machine, there was a pinch in the crook of Calvin’s elbow and then-
The sun was warm on his skin. It felt amazing, and Calvin stretched out on the beach blanket, relishing in the heat and tingle, the smell of salt.
“Would you mind putting this coconut oil on my back?” a voice said. Calvin opened his eyes, turning to the tanned blond lounging next to him.
“I can’t quite reach,” she explained, with a demure smile.
Calvin took the bottle from her hands, looked at it. Something felt off, like he’d forgotten his homework or left his keys at home, something just out of reach.
“Here,” the blond said, slipping off her bikini top. “Just between my shoulder blades.”
Calvin made a valiant effort not to stare at her - frankly huge - breasts and failed. His skin felt overheated and prickly, and it wasn’t from the sun anymore.
She giggled again when she saw him staring. “If you want, you can rub some oil on those, too.”
“I- I mean- what?”
A manicured fingertip made its way down his stomach, resting at the waistband of his swim trunks. “You can do whatever you want to me,” she said. “Anything in the world.”
The finger hooked into the elastic, tugging on it, and the feeling hit him stronger than ever, that something was wrong, he was missing something. The feeling had been growing for the last year, and was honed to a point now that there was some gorgeous woman, looking like she’d walked off a porno, jiggling at him.
“Stop,” he said, shutting his eyes. His voice was quiet, but he meant it, and that command carried further in the air than it should have. “That’s enough.”
When he opened his eyes, the blond was gone. He thought he was alone until he saw, far off in the distance, a feline shape bounding down the beach. It was a tiger, a huge hulking beast with bright orange and black stripes, amber eyes trained on him, and Calvin should have been running or something but it... he...
It was Hobbes. Calvin had burst into thoroughly embarrassing tears by the time Hobbes pounced on him. Hobbes called him a moron and Calvin nodded, blubbering out yes, yes, he was, he couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been, god, he’d missed him, everything had been so boring without him
Hobbes explained everything, all the stupid unanswered questions that had been nagging at Calvin for ages, the lingering confusion over the dream they were in, and a few other things besides. They talked forever, much longer than should have been possible, but this was a dream. It was the first lesson about dreamsharing that Eames learned: that reality here was infinitely malleable, and bending the rules was easy when one knew how.
“You won’t remember all of this when you wake up,” Hobbes said, when the sun was finally setting.
“I’ll remember enough,” Calvin promised. He couldn’t lose all this again, he’d die. “I’ll tattoo it on my legs if I have to, like in that weird movie David made me watch.”
Hobbes laughed, sharp canines glinting in the fiery evening light. “Don’t let it come to that.”
+++
“This is terrible,” Eames says, breathless from both the realization and Hobbes’ weight pressing him into the dirt. “It’s even worse than I thought.”
“How is this worse than you thought?” Hobbes asks, rolling off him. “Your original thoughts seemed bad enough.”
“There are so many ways this can end terribly,” Eames says, woeful. “And so many reasons why it will. It’s an inevitable tragedy in the making.”
Hobbes bats at Eames like he’s a half-dead mouse lying on the floor, which seems appropriate. That’s about how he feels. “You’re imagining them, aren’t you?” Hobbes asks.
“What?”
“All the terrible ways it could end.”
Eames nods, miserable.
“Fine. Let’s hear them,” Hobbes says, rolling around on his back, scratching his spine.
Eames takes a deep breath.
+++
Eames can admit now that he probably didn’t make the best first impression on Arthur. Breaking into the other man’s room wasn’t exactly the best way to introduce oneself. But, in Eames’ defense, it was Arthur that pulled out his gun first. That counts for something, even if it was only a difference of a few seconds.
“Tell your boy to stand down, Cobb,” Eames said, aiming for Arthur’s chest. Arthur’s gun was aimed straight at Eames’ eyes, and he had to wonder: was this kid actually that good of a shot, or was it an intimidation tactic?
“I’m not his boy,” Cobb’s boy said, and something in his voice made Eames take a closer look. He looked about nineteen, but he was missing the cockiness of that age, the awkwardness about the limbs. Eames revised his age up to twenty-two, and made a mental note that Arthur was self-conscious about his youthful face. (He found out later that Arthur was actually twenty-four, and not just self-conscious but rather trigger-happy when it came to his appearance. Eames had been lucky to escape with his life and both testicles still attached to his body.)
“Who are you, and why are you in my room?” Arthur demanded, his voice low and angry.
“I was getting the PASIV,” Eames said, nodding at the open safe. He’d wanted Hobbes’ opinion on on one his forges; he wasn’t sure if the walk was quite right. “And I’m nobody you want as your enemy, darling.”
Arthur glared at him for a second, then said, “Do you actually know this guy, Dom, or can I just shoot him?”
Eames snorted a laugh. Dom sighed, that particular sigh that conveyed the immense headache he was going to have if the bullshit didn’t end quickly. “That’s Eames,” he said. “He’s our forger.”
“That’s Mal’s sort-of cousin?” Arthur asked, which was news to Eames. (He later found out that she’d lied to get Eames the job; Dom was a paranoid son-of-a-bitch in his early criminal career.)
“Yes, and she’ll be pretty put out if you shoot him.”
“So would I, if it matters,” Eames added.
“It doesn’t,” Arthur replied, but he let his gun hand fall. “Maybe next time, instead of breaking into my room and almost getting shot, you could just call ahead.”
It became an unfortunate pattern: Eames overstepping the bounds that Arthur thought were obvious, and Arthur overreacting. Not the most auspicious start to a working relationship, never mind a romantic one. If Eames were in his right mind, he’d have known right away that any kind of romantic entanglement would probably result only in carnage.
But nobody had ever accused Eames of being in his right mind.
+++
“Number twenty-eight: he’ll be tortured and executed by former KGB agents in Moscow due to some misunderstanding with an organized crime syndicate,” Eames says. “His Russian is terrible, he’d never be able to talk his way out of it.”
“Number twenty-nine: kidnapped by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, imprisoned in their mansion in Bali, and forced into indentured servitude as a pool boy,” Hobbes replies. He’s been trading off with Eames in imagining the demise of his and Arthur’s relationship.
“Number thirty: there could be a natural gas explosion under his hotel room in Chicago, incinerating the whole block.”
“Number thirty-one: he could be eaten by one of those giant jellyfish.”
“Number thirty-two: he could fall into Limbo and emerge as a vegetable, albeit an extremely attractive one.”
Hobbes gives him a look, and Eames knows they’re imagining the same thing: Arthur as a sleeping carrot, leafy green hair, encased in a glass coffin. They both burst out laughing at the same time.
“There’s one that you’ve forgotten, you know,” Hobbes says, when their giggles subside.
“What?” Eames asks.
“An accident. A hit and run.”
Eames swallows. “Believe me, I haven’t forgotten that one.”
Hobbes puts his paw against Eames’ cheek, just resting it there, a light pressure. Eames shuts his eyes, relishing the silence between them. That was what he missed most, when he was a teenage fuck-up and Hobbes was gone: the way they don’t have to speak to understand each other.
“Number thirty-three,” Eames says, Hobbes’ fur tickling his nose. “I preemptively break up with him because I’m a great big coward who can’t deal with the idea of having his heart broken.”
“Unless you’re the one doing the breaking.”
“Yes, but I’m used to being alone anyway.”
“You’re used to protecting yourself,” Hobbes corrects. “It’s not the same.”
“I’m protecting both of us,” Eames points out.
“I’m capable of protecting myself,” Hobbes says. There’s the suggestion of claws now, against Eames’ face, the fine muscles contracting just enough to remind him that they’re there. “And I’ve saved your ungrateful butt plenty of times.”
“You have, at that,” Eames says softly.
+++
Eames was not good at relationships. He had never even been good at friendships, aside from with Hobbes, and he’d nearly screwed that one up. He didn’t know how most people went about their daily lives with half their hearts in the keeping of another person. (A tiger, yes, but a tiger was a good guardian for something so stupidly delicate.)
In that ridiculously luxurious hotel suite after the job, when Arthur stood in the doorway to the bedroom, naked except for his boxers, blinking the sleep from his eyes, limbs heavy and relaxed; unguarded, unarmed, open, easy, delicate, vulnerable-
Eames knew, with absolute surety, that thinking that this thing between them could be a casual fling was ridiculous. So he panicked, and rightly so. And Arthur overreacted, also rightly so. The pattern had been set in place, after all, from their very first meeting.
When Arthur stormed off, slamming the door to the bathroom, Eames sat at the counter for a moment, looking at the glass that Arthur had been drinking whiskey out of. His fingerprints were clear, delicate lines and whorls on the crystal, and there was a smudge where his lips had touched the rim.
Eames blinked when the shower in the bathroom turned on, then stood and went into the bedroom to pack.
“What are you doing?” Hobbes asked. He was sitting by the window. His eyes looked more feral than usual, his voice closer to a growl.
“Leaving.” Eames’ voice was gruff as well. He was completely unnerved by the way that Arthur had seen through him, and wasn’t about to go offer himself up for that process again.
When Eames turned back around, Hobbes was standing much closer. He seemed to have gotten bigger, too, or maybe it was that Eames had shrunk, back into the pipsqueak form that had dogged him for most of his childhood. He felt small and vulnerable, like his emotions had outgrown his body, his flesh too weak to contain them.
“Don’t,” Hobbes said.
Eames opened his mouth, then shut it. He couldn’t find it in himself to argue with Hobbes, even though he always argued with Hobbes. That convinced him more than anything else to stay.
He nodded, then put down the shoes he’d been about to slip on.
“At least we can be reasonably assured that he’s unarmed in there,” Hobbes said, in a more normal tone of voice.
“It’s Arthur,” Eames pointed out. “He’s never unarmed. He’s probably hidden a gun in the toilet tank or something.”
Hobbes nodded. “Try not to get hit anywhere vital.”
Too late, Eames thought, already feeling an ache in his chest.
+++
“Do you know what the worst thing is?” Hobbes says. “The absolute worst thing in the world?”
“What is it?” Eames asks.
“That there isn’t one worst thing,” Hobbes says. He rolls over to face Eames. “That there are so many ways things can go horribly wrong, and so many bad endings to any story. There’s broken hearts and former KGB agents, cancer and hit and runs, giant jellyfish and malaria and suicide...”
Eames shuts his eyes, listening to the soft cadence of Hobbes’ words. Hobbes has always been a laconic sort, not given to lengthy exposition, unlike Eames. When he does talk this way, Eames has learned to shut up and listen.
“There’s watching someone you love hurtling towards self-destruction, and being unable to stop them. There are stupid mistakes and dirty bombs and loose ends. There’s lingering dissatisfaction, and baby raccoons who won’t live no matter how much you want them to. Life doesn’t get easier as you grow up, and the stakes get higher. That’s the worst thing: being forced to live with the daily potential for catastrophe looming over you, with no way to prepare for it when it comes.”
Eames lets out a breath. “So what do we do?”
Hobbes rolls back over, standing up and stretching. “Keep living anyway.”
Eames thinks about it for a moment. Then: “That’s it? That’s your advice? Life sucks, or at least it has the potential to be dreadful, deal with it?”
“Yup.”
“You have got to be kidding me-”
Eames is interrupted by Hobbes’ massive tiger paw coming down over his mouth, muffling his words.
“You’re wasting a really nice dream by imagining the worst case scenario. By all means, keep at it, but I’m going exploring. Maybe there’s pirate treasure in those caves over there.”
We’re miles from the ocean, Eames thinks. Then he frowns. That objection sounded entirely too grown up.
“You’re probably right,” he says instead. And now that he’s listening for it - now that he wants it to be there- he can hear the sound of the sea, a distant (but not too distant) roar.
+++
“Where are we going?” Arthur asks, visibly stifling a yawn. “Eames, I’ve been traveling for the last ten hours, I just want to go home-”
Eames smiles. “Home?”
“Our apartment?” Arthur asks, like Eames is being dense. “With our bed in it? Where I can crash out for the next three days?”
“Say that again.”
“What? That I’m going to crash out for three days? Eames, you know this job was hell, you talked me down from shooting at least two of my team members in non-vital areas, and I’ve barely-”
“No, no,” Eames says, before Arthur can get worked up into a full-blown rant. “Before that, you arse.”
Arthur blinks. It takes a second, then he gets it. “Our bed.”
Eames’ smile becomes a grin without his permission. “If I weren’t driving, I think I’d probably just yank off your exquisitely tailored trousers and ravish you.”
Arthur’s recovered enough to say, “Well, if we were going back to our apartment and our bed, I’d be happy to let you. So long as you didn’t mind me sleeping through it.”
“As if I’d let you fall asleep while you’re impaled on my cock.”
Arthur’s glare is like a physical force in the car. “I take it back. I’m never letting you touch me again. And for the last time, where the fuck are we going?”
“It’s late June, and it’s a clear night, but it’s supposed to rain for the next few days.”
Arthur blinks. “Yeah, so?”
Eames pulls over and parks in a gravel turnout, grabs the blanket out from the backseat of the car, then opens his car door. “Come on,” he says, getting out.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Eames, I’m not up for going for a hike in the country-”
“Would you just pause your whinging for the moment? If you still want me to take you home in five minutes, I’ll do it, but just-” He swallows, suddenly unsure of himself, of this whole stupid plan. “In the meantime, can you just trust me?”
Arthur sighs. “All right,” he says. “But let me change out of my shoes, I just got these in Italy a few months ago, damn it-”
They start out again, Arthur now wearing a pair of sneakers. They hop over a weathered fence and walk out into the middle of a field. There’s a line of trees off to the west, and Eames can hear a brook murmuring nonsense somewhere nearby. He spreads out the blanket, and Arthur collapses on it. Eames lowers himself down a bit more gingerly.
“Gonna tell me what this is about yet?” Arthur asks.
“Just wait a second,” Eames says.
Arthur huffs a sigh, but he turns towards Eames, running a hand down his calf.
Eames smiles and points. “There,” he says.
Arthur sits up and looks around. For a moment, he looks confused and annoyed, but then he sees them.
Glow worms. Or, as Arthur would know them (and as Eames called them when he was still a bratty American boy named Calvin), fireflies. Dozens of them dot the field.
“Oh,” Arthur says. A simple sound, barely more than an exhalation.
“Sorry, I know it’s-”
“If you say this is stupid, I’m going to punch you in the diaphragm until you throw up.”
Arthur’s threats get hilariously specific when he doesn’t actually mean them. Eames shuts his mouth, smiling. Neither of them say anything for a long moment, watching the green lights wavering above the grass in companionable silence. Finally, Arthur gives a truly jaw-cracking yawn, so Eames lies down and pulls Arthur atop him.
“I’ll fall asleep,” Arthur warns.
“That’s okay,” Eames tells him. “I can carry you back to the car.”
It’s a sign of Arthur’s exhaustion that he doesn’t even object to that, just says, “I’ll probably drool on you.”
“I’m used to it.”
Arthur’s breathing slows, and his eyes slip shut. Eames listens to him, listens to the crickets singing in the fields, the brook, a far off animal cry, to the ocean of blood that’s crashing in his ears. He can feel a tiny wet spot forming on his shirt where Arthur is, indeed, beginning to drool on him.
I love you, he thinks, and it sets his heart beating like a jackhammer. And because Arthur set the pattern for confessing their feelings when one of them is already unconscious-
Because Eames is, in fact, crazy, and his response to any kind of terrifying scenario is to jump into it without any forethought-
Because there are former KGB agents and giant jellyfish and all manner of sad endings in the world-
Because of all these things, but mostly because the truth of these words is enough to make his blood run cold and adrenaline flood his system, he says it aloud:
“I love you.”
And of course, Arthur’s not actually asleep. Eames feels him grin against his chest. His heart now feels like it’s going to pound right out of his ribcage, just jump into Arthur’s hands like a frightened animal seeking shelter.
“I heard that,” Arthur mutters, blinking up at him. He puts his hand on Eames’ chest, above his panicked, thumping heart. “Calm down.”
“That was terrifying,” Eames says.
“I know, it’s okay,” Arthur says. “Say it again.”
Eames covers Arthur’s hand with his own. He can still feel the hammering rhythm of his pulse beneath them. “It’ll give me a heart attack if I even try.”
"It's okay," Arthur says again. He scoots up Eames’ chest, tucking his face into Eames’ neck. “I know CPR. I can revive you, if it comes to that.”
Author: starlingthefool
Artist: red_rahl
Team: ROMANCE
Prompt: Devotion, innocence
Word count: 5691
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: Crossover with Calvin and Hobbes. Mentions of character death, grief, discussions about fatalism and existentialism, and some shmoopy-ass romance.
Summary:
Calvin: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?
Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.
Calvin: I can't tell if that's funny or really scary.
Notes: This is a sequel to Lions and Tigers, which is a crossover with Calvin & Hobbes, and this would definitely make more sense if you read that first. A billion thanks to red_rahl who is fabulous and drew the art in like A DAY. Thanks also to gelbwax, who kicked my ass into gear while I was whining about it, and to gollumgollum, who beta’d and cried about baby raccoons with me.
+++
Eames is about two-thirds of the way asleep when Arthur, who’s spooned up against his back, pushes his nose against the nape of Eames’ neck and sleepily mutters, “I love you.”
Eames snaps back into frozen wakefulness, the kind familiar to anyone who has to worry about getting shot in the face as part of their job. He spends a few terrible minutes trying to figure out how to respond, and then realizes that Arthur is already snoring.
Eames does not sleep well that night.
+++
Early the next morning, Arthur leaves for a two-week job in Chicago. It’s barely past dawn, and Eames lies in bed (not their bed, just the bed) listening to Arthur shower, shave, and mutter curses at various pieces of furniture that trip him up. When he comes back in, smelling of aftershave and toothpaste and coffee, Eames lets his eyes slip shut, pretending to be mostly-asleep (which is far easier to fake than totally-asleep). Though he feels nearly ill with dread, Arthur does not say the three words again. He just kisses Eames soundly, lets out a sigh that is both soft and fond, then picks up his bag and walks out.
Eames listens to Arthur’s steps as they echo down the hallway, the slam of the door to the stairwell, and waits. He pictures Arthur running back, throwing open the door to the apartment (not their apartment, just an apartment that they happen to have co-signed the lease on; it’s not like they used their real names or anything), and declaring his love for Eames in a suitably dramatic way. Eames can imagine the way Arthur will turn red, the frantic look in his eyes as he sputters out the words that he let slip so incautiously the night before. Or maybe he’ll look stoic, like he’s about to appear in front of a firing squad, taking a deep breath and saying the words in an even, unafraid voice.
Nothing happens. Eames waits for ten minutes before pulling out the spare PASIV he keeps in the linen closet. He needs to have a heart-to-heart with Hobbes.
“Arthur’s rubbing off on you,” the tiger says critically, eyeing the bland hotel room that Eames has dreamed them into. “What are we doing in a Marriot?”
It’s a sign of Eames’ distress that he doesn’t even joke about Hobbes’ use of the phrase rubbing off. “I need your advice,” he says instead.
“This is boring,” Hobbes says. “Let’s go outside.”
“I’m serious here.”
“So am I. There’s no reason for us to be inside a boring hotel room when we could be anywhere else in the universe.”
Eames has to concede the point, and they soon find themselves on a grassy path in a forest, surrounded tall beeches and elms and maples.
“He loves me,” Eames says, shoving his hands in his pocket.
“Yup.” Hobbes does not sound at all surprised.
“Yup?” Eames says indignantly. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
“It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that he loves you.”
“Not to me!”
“Which proves my point entirely.”
+++
For years, Calvin was convinced that his dad wasn’t actually dead. He’d been abducted by evil Zogwargs from Neptune. He’d fallen into a wormhole, and was living as a freedom fighter/airship captain elsewhere on the space-time continuum. The mafia was after him over some kind of patent infringement deal gone bad, and he’d had to go into Witness Protection. Calvin liked the last scenario the best, because it explained why he and his mom had to leave Ohio and come to Leeds, which was pretty much the worst place on the planet.
Everything that had been bad about his life before was worse. Their house was smaller and colder, the weather was rainier, the kids were meaner, school was miserable-er, and there were no woods or hillsides or gravel pits, no place to escape. Except for the inside of his head, of course. He’d always enjoyed being other people; Spiff or Stupendous Man or whoever. Now that being Calvin was such a miserable experience, it was easier than ever to slip into someone else’s life for a few hours.
“Calvin, you need to get your head out of the clouds,” his mother said. “You’re smarter than this-”
This being another failed test, this time in history.
“It’s not my fault!” he protested. (That wasn’t true: he hadn’t studied, because the War of the Roses was boring. Why couldn’t they give him tests on things like pirate republics or the Pleistocene era?)
“Calvin, you’re eleven years old.” She sounded tired and disappointed, like she always did. He missed the days when she would just get angry with him. “You need to start taking some responsibility for your actions.”
“I hate it here!” he said suddenly. And even though he’d said the words a hundred times before, he’d never meant them quite so vehemently. Anger was prickling along his skin, like ants swarming along the branches of a tree. “Why did we have to move here? Why did we have to leave?”
His mom put a hand to her eyes, squeezing at her temples. “We’ve been over this-”
“Our apartment is awful, my teachers hate me, the kids at school are morons, and the weather sucks. Why can’t we go home?”
“Enough, Calvin. I know it’s hard, but we both have to make the best of it.”
Then it slipped out: “Dad’s never going to find us here!”
The second the words were out of his mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake. Not just because his mother was looking at him with fresh grief staining her eyes, but because giving voice to his secret belief - that Dad was okay, even if he had been kidnapped by aliens or was hiding from gangsters - made him instantly realize how ridiculous it was. His dad was dead. Full stop.
Calvin sprinted out of the kitchen and into his room, slamming the door shut. He could feel something brewing in him, something fierce and terrible and enraged.
“Hey,” Hobbes said, from the bed. “What are you-”
Calvin took a book from his desk and hurled it at the wall, relishing the bang when it hit. He threw another, then another. He tore the drawings off his wall, ripping them up and throwing the pieces onto the floor. He was about to pick up the framed picture of the four of them - Mom and Dad, him, and Hobbes - and throw it out the window when Hobbes tackled him. They fought for a while, destroying the room even more, until they were both exhausted and panting.
“He’s not in Witness Protection,” Calvin said, staring up at his ceiling. “He wasn’t abducted by aliens.”
“I know,” Hobbes said.
“He’s not coming back.”
“I know,” Hobbes said again.
Calvin could feel nothing but seething anger, that his best friend had let him believe a lie for so long.
+++
“He thought I was asleep!” Eames says indignantly, kicking a stone. It flies into a tree with a satisfying thwack. “Who the hell tells someone they love them when they’re not even conscious?”
“Maybe someone who has an inkling as to how much you would freak out,” Hobbes says. He bounds ahead to a narrow stream, drinking from it. Eames follows, crouching down next to him, and stares at their wavering reflections in the water.
“Or someone too cowardly to say it when I’m awake,” he points out.
“Does Arthur strike you as a coward?” Hobbes says, sitting down.
Eames collapses next to him. He dislodges another stone from the dirt and tosses it into the water, trying to think of a way to answer that doesn’t make him sound like an idiot.
“Me neither,” Hobbes says.
+++
It was an oddly gradual process, the way Hobbes faded out of his life. Calvin simply stopped looking for him to be there. He stopped looking for anything outside of himself, content to stay in the boundaries of his own adolescent misery.
He started to chase thrills, because there was nothing else worth doing. Skipping school. Stealing from the shops on the High Street. Smoking cigarettes. Lying - he’d always been inventive, but he honed his skills in fabrication to an art.
When he finally went through a growth spurt, growing about five inches and putting on two stone over the course of a summer, he stopped taking shit from the bullies that had been tailing him since they’d moved there. The teachers had mostly given up on him at this point. He was still the mad kid at school, but now people mostly left him alone. He had friends, of a sort; the bad sort, he knew, disloyal and conniving, but they helped fill the days.
His feet were on the ground at last, dragging against the permanently wet pavement.
If his life was all a wash of gray, though, then his dreams were technicolor pulp-art, lurid adventures, slick nightmares of saturated colors. He always woke violently, thrust into consciousness covered in sweat and with his heart pounding painfully against his ribs. He realized, sometime around sixteen, that he was missing something, that there was an empty space in his life that used to be filled, but couldn’t remember what.
+++
“Why now?” Eames asks. “What does it mean?”
“It means he loves you, you nincompoop.”
“Nobody makes a declaration of love without any expectations. They don’t just say it to have it be said. That’s not how it works.”
“Then how does it work, smarty-pants?”
Eames makes a face. “People say that they love you because they want something.”
“I refuse to believe that you’re that cynical.”
“I’m that cynical and then some, thank you,” Eames says primly. He stands and dusts himself off. “I’m a conman, I’m a manipulative bastard, and I know what makes people tick. Nobody says I love you without expecting something in return.”
Hobbes looks distinctly unimpressed. “Do you love him?” he asks.
“That is not at issue here!” Eames yells, and stomps off.
“Oh my god,” Hobbes says, laughing at him. “You do.”
“Piss off!
Eames gets only a few feet away before a blow between his shoulder blades knocks him into the dirt. Hobbes has always been bigger than him, that’s just how it works, and has always been capable of pinning Eames effortlessly. He does so now, with paws the size of dinner plates planted firmly on Eames’ shoulders.
“Get off me, fleabag!”
“You’re gooey in love with him, aren’t you?” Hobbes crows. “I bet you’re writing him MASH notes and sparkly Valentines and terrible poetry.”
“I haven’t written a MASH note since I was seven years old, you ass.”
“Arthur and Eames, sitting in a tree, kay-eye-ess-ess-”
“Shut it!”
“Have you compared him to a summer’s day, yet?”
No, he bloody well hasn’t. If anything, Arthur is a spring day; a wakeful wind that stirs electric-green leaves, the smell of earth, sunlight that soothes the ache of a long winter-
Oh. Bollocks.
“Told you,” Hobbes growls.
+++
The first time Calvin Jasper Eames tried dreamsharing was the morning of his seventeenth birthday. He was spending the summer hols at his friend’s parents’ flat in Manchester. His mother had agreed to the idea, Calvin thought, with something like relief.
He wasn’t entirely fond of the friend in question, David. Calvin thought he was a spoiled, backstabbing weasel, actually, but he liked Calvin, and kept him around like a mascot, buying his friendship with booze, pot, and X. And occasionally, with something more.
David pestered him until Calvin dragged his carcass out of bed, and together, they caught a bus to the city centre, getting off near Canal Street.
“God, you didn’t get me a blowjob from a gay hooker, did you?” Calvin asked.
David laughed. “Maybe for your next birthday.”
They finally stopped in front of a graffiti’d metal door that was sandwiched in between a closed kebab shop and an empty Poundland.
“It’s me!” David shouted. “I brought my plus one.”
“What am I, your date to the orgy?” Calvin said.
“You wish, Eames,” David scoffed.
(Actually, he wishes, Calvin thought. Behind the bluster, behind the slurs and the stupid machismo and the tendency to call Calvin by his last name, David wanted him. Calvin knew, but didn’t really care one way or another at this point.)
The door opened, and a skinny Indian guy looked out, glancing down the street before settling his gaze on the two of them. “You have the money?” he asked. There was a trace of an accent there, but not much of one.
David scoffed. “Of course.”
“Same deal,” the man said, putting his palm out. “Half upfront, half after.”
David pulled out a small bundle of cash and handed it over. The man flipped through it quickly, then allowed them inside. Calvin followed David up a flight of narrow stairs that reeked of Dettol and piss, into an apartment that reeked of Dettol and weed.
“Is this his first time?” the Indian guy asked.
“It is,” David said, before Calvin could open his mouth.
“You’ll go under separately, then,” the guy said, as he led them into an dark room, where heavy curtains blocked most of the light.
“What? But I wanted to-”
“Those are my rules,” the guy said. “I can’t let two green dreamers go under together, it’ll be a miracle if you don’t crack open your minds like eggs.”
None of this made any sense to Calvin, though it did make him a little nervous. David and the other guy continued to argue for a while, until David finally threw up his hands and collapsed down on one of the couches. Calvin recognized the beginning of a massive sulk session, knew he wouldn’t get more than a monosyllabic answer out of David for another hour at least, so he turned back to the Indian man.
“Look, what is this? Dav’s told me fuck all about what we’re doing here.”
“Take a seat,” the other man said, nodding towards the empty couch. When Calvin was seated, he squatted down in front of a banged-up coffee table with a big plastic case on it, and opened it up. There was some kind of complicated piece of machinery in there.
“You ever had a dream that you could control?” he asked.
The question made Calvin uncomfortable, for reasons he wasn’t really up to analyzing. It seemed like his dreams more often controlled him.
The man either didn’t see or ignored the ambivalence on Calvin’s face. “Well, this is even better. Give me your hand.”
Calvin did, against his better instincts. The other man pulled an IV out from the machine, there was a pinch in the crook of Calvin’s elbow and then-
The sun was warm on his skin. It felt amazing, and Calvin stretched out on the beach blanket, relishing in the heat and tingle, the smell of salt.
“Would you mind putting this coconut oil on my back?” a voice said. Calvin opened his eyes, turning to the tanned blond lounging next to him.
“I can’t quite reach,” she explained, with a demure smile.
Calvin took the bottle from her hands, looked at it. Something felt off, like he’d forgotten his homework or left his keys at home, something just out of reach.
“Here,” the blond said, slipping off her bikini top. “Just between my shoulder blades.”
Calvin made a valiant effort not to stare at her - frankly huge - breasts and failed. His skin felt overheated and prickly, and it wasn’t from the sun anymore.
She giggled again when she saw him staring. “If you want, you can rub some oil on those, too.”
“I- I mean- what?”
A manicured fingertip made its way down his stomach, resting at the waistband of his swim trunks. “You can do whatever you want to me,” she said. “Anything in the world.”
The finger hooked into the elastic, tugging on it, and the feeling hit him stronger than ever, that something was wrong, he was missing something. The feeling had been growing for the last year, and was honed to a point now that there was some gorgeous woman, looking like she’d walked off a porno, jiggling at him.
“Stop,” he said, shutting his eyes. His voice was quiet, but he meant it, and that command carried further in the air than it should have. “That’s enough.”
When he opened his eyes, the blond was gone. He thought he was alone until he saw, far off in the distance, a feline shape bounding down the beach. It was a tiger, a huge hulking beast with bright orange and black stripes, amber eyes trained on him, and Calvin should have been running or something but it... he...
It was Hobbes. Calvin had burst into thoroughly embarrassing tears by the time Hobbes pounced on him. Hobbes called him a moron and Calvin nodded, blubbering out yes, yes, he was, he couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been, god, he’d missed him, everything had been so boring without him
Hobbes explained everything, all the stupid unanswered questions that had been nagging at Calvin for ages, the lingering confusion over the dream they were in, and a few other things besides. They talked forever, much longer than should have been possible, but this was a dream. It was the first lesson about dreamsharing that Eames learned: that reality here was infinitely malleable, and bending the rules was easy when one knew how.
“You won’t remember all of this when you wake up,” Hobbes said, when the sun was finally setting.
“I’ll remember enough,” Calvin promised. He couldn’t lose all this again, he’d die. “I’ll tattoo it on my legs if I have to, like in that weird movie David made me watch.”
Hobbes laughed, sharp canines glinting in the fiery evening light. “Don’t let it come to that.”
+++
“This is terrible,” Eames says, breathless from both the realization and Hobbes’ weight pressing him into the dirt. “It’s even worse than I thought.”
“How is this worse than you thought?” Hobbes asks, rolling off him. “Your original thoughts seemed bad enough.”
“There are so many ways this can end terribly,” Eames says, woeful. “And so many reasons why it will. It’s an inevitable tragedy in the making.”
Hobbes bats at Eames like he’s a half-dead mouse lying on the floor, which seems appropriate. That’s about how he feels. “You’re imagining them, aren’t you?” Hobbes asks.
“What?”
“All the terrible ways it could end.”
Eames nods, miserable.
“Fine. Let’s hear them,” Hobbes says, rolling around on his back, scratching his spine.
Eames takes a deep breath.
+++
Eames can admit now that he probably didn’t make the best first impression on Arthur. Breaking into the other man’s room wasn’t exactly the best way to introduce oneself. But, in Eames’ defense, it was Arthur that pulled out his gun first. That counts for something, even if it was only a difference of a few seconds.
“Tell your boy to stand down, Cobb,” Eames said, aiming for Arthur’s chest. Arthur’s gun was aimed straight at Eames’ eyes, and he had to wonder: was this kid actually that good of a shot, or was it an intimidation tactic?
“I’m not his boy,” Cobb’s boy said, and something in his voice made Eames take a closer look. He looked about nineteen, but he was missing the cockiness of that age, the awkwardness about the limbs. Eames revised his age up to twenty-two, and made a mental note that Arthur was self-conscious about his youthful face. (He found out later that Arthur was actually twenty-four, and not just self-conscious but rather trigger-happy when it came to his appearance. Eames had been lucky to escape with his life and both testicles still attached to his body.)
“Who are you, and why are you in my room?” Arthur demanded, his voice low and angry.
“I was getting the PASIV,” Eames said, nodding at the open safe. He’d wanted Hobbes’ opinion on on one his forges; he wasn’t sure if the walk was quite right. “And I’m nobody you want as your enemy, darling.”
Arthur glared at him for a second, then said, “Do you actually know this guy, Dom, or can I just shoot him?”
Eames snorted a laugh. Dom sighed, that particular sigh that conveyed the immense headache he was going to have if the bullshit didn’t end quickly. “That’s Eames,” he said. “He’s our forger.”
“That’s Mal’s sort-of cousin?” Arthur asked, which was news to Eames. (He later found out that she’d lied to get Eames the job; Dom was a paranoid son-of-a-bitch in his early criminal career.)
“Yes, and she’ll be pretty put out if you shoot him.”
“So would I, if it matters,” Eames added.
“It doesn’t,” Arthur replied, but he let his gun hand fall. “Maybe next time, instead of breaking into my room and almost getting shot, you could just call ahead.”
It became an unfortunate pattern: Eames overstepping the bounds that Arthur thought were obvious, and Arthur overreacting. Not the most auspicious start to a working relationship, never mind a romantic one. If Eames were in his right mind, he’d have known right away that any kind of romantic entanglement would probably result only in carnage.
But nobody had ever accused Eames of being in his right mind.
+++
“Number twenty-eight: he’ll be tortured and executed by former KGB agents in Moscow due to some misunderstanding with an organized crime syndicate,” Eames says. “His Russian is terrible, he’d never be able to talk his way out of it.”
“Number twenty-nine: kidnapped by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, imprisoned in their mansion in Bali, and forced into indentured servitude as a pool boy,” Hobbes replies. He’s been trading off with Eames in imagining the demise of his and Arthur’s relationship.
“Number thirty: there could be a natural gas explosion under his hotel room in Chicago, incinerating the whole block.”
“Number thirty-one: he could be eaten by one of those giant jellyfish.”
“Number thirty-two: he could fall into Limbo and emerge as a vegetable, albeit an extremely attractive one.”
Hobbes gives him a look, and Eames knows they’re imagining the same thing: Arthur as a sleeping carrot, leafy green hair, encased in a glass coffin. They both burst out laughing at the same time.
“There’s one that you’ve forgotten, you know,” Hobbes says, when their giggles subside.
“What?” Eames asks.
“An accident. A hit and run.”
Eames swallows. “Believe me, I haven’t forgotten that one.”
Hobbes puts his paw against Eames’ cheek, just resting it there, a light pressure. Eames shuts his eyes, relishing the silence between them. That was what he missed most, when he was a teenage fuck-up and Hobbes was gone: the way they don’t have to speak to understand each other.
“Number thirty-three,” Eames says, Hobbes’ fur tickling his nose. “I preemptively break up with him because I’m a great big coward who can’t deal with the idea of having his heart broken.”
“Unless you’re the one doing the breaking.”
“Yes, but I’m used to being alone anyway.”
“You’re used to protecting yourself,” Hobbes corrects. “It’s not the same.”
“I’m protecting both of us,” Eames points out.
“I’m capable of protecting myself,” Hobbes says. There’s the suggestion of claws now, against Eames’ face, the fine muscles contracting just enough to remind him that they’re there. “And I’ve saved your ungrateful butt plenty of times.”
“You have, at that,” Eames says softly.
+++
Eames was not good at relationships. He had never even been good at friendships, aside from with Hobbes, and he’d nearly screwed that one up. He didn’t know how most people went about their daily lives with half their hearts in the keeping of another person. (A tiger, yes, but a tiger was a good guardian for something so stupidly delicate.)
In that ridiculously luxurious hotel suite after the job, when Arthur stood in the doorway to the bedroom, naked except for his boxers, blinking the sleep from his eyes, limbs heavy and relaxed; unguarded, unarmed, open, easy, delicate, vulnerable-
Eames knew, with absolute surety, that thinking that this thing between them could be a casual fling was ridiculous. So he panicked, and rightly so. And Arthur overreacted, also rightly so. The pattern had been set in place, after all, from their very first meeting.
When Arthur stormed off, slamming the door to the bathroom, Eames sat at the counter for a moment, looking at the glass that Arthur had been drinking whiskey out of. His fingerprints were clear, delicate lines and whorls on the crystal, and there was a smudge where his lips had touched the rim.
Eames blinked when the shower in the bathroom turned on, then stood and went into the bedroom to pack.
“What are you doing?” Hobbes asked. He was sitting by the window. His eyes looked more feral than usual, his voice closer to a growl.
“Leaving.” Eames’ voice was gruff as well. He was completely unnerved by the way that Arthur had seen through him, and wasn’t about to go offer himself up for that process again.
When Eames turned back around, Hobbes was standing much closer. He seemed to have gotten bigger, too, or maybe it was that Eames had shrunk, back into the pipsqueak form that had dogged him for most of his childhood. He felt small and vulnerable, like his emotions had outgrown his body, his flesh too weak to contain them.
“Don’t,” Hobbes said.
Eames opened his mouth, then shut it. He couldn’t find it in himself to argue with Hobbes, even though he always argued with Hobbes. That convinced him more than anything else to stay.
He nodded, then put down the shoes he’d been about to slip on.
“At least we can be reasonably assured that he’s unarmed in there,” Hobbes said, in a more normal tone of voice.
“It’s Arthur,” Eames pointed out. “He’s never unarmed. He’s probably hidden a gun in the toilet tank or something.”
Hobbes nodded. “Try not to get hit anywhere vital.”
Too late, Eames thought, already feeling an ache in his chest.
+++
“Do you know what the worst thing is?” Hobbes says. “The absolute worst thing in the world?”
“What is it?” Eames asks.
“That there isn’t one worst thing,” Hobbes says. He rolls over to face Eames. “That there are so many ways things can go horribly wrong, and so many bad endings to any story. There’s broken hearts and former KGB agents, cancer and hit and runs, giant jellyfish and malaria and suicide...”
Eames shuts his eyes, listening to the soft cadence of Hobbes’ words. Hobbes has always been a laconic sort, not given to lengthy exposition, unlike Eames. When he does talk this way, Eames has learned to shut up and listen.
“There’s watching someone you love hurtling towards self-destruction, and being unable to stop them. There are stupid mistakes and dirty bombs and loose ends. There’s lingering dissatisfaction, and baby raccoons who won’t live no matter how much you want them to. Life doesn’t get easier as you grow up, and the stakes get higher. That’s the worst thing: being forced to live with the daily potential for catastrophe looming over you, with no way to prepare for it when it comes.”
Eames lets out a breath. “So what do we do?”
Hobbes rolls back over, standing up and stretching. “Keep living anyway.”
Eames thinks about it for a moment. Then: “That’s it? That’s your advice? Life sucks, or at least it has the potential to be dreadful, deal with it?”
“Yup.”
“You have got to be kidding me-”
Eames is interrupted by Hobbes’ massive tiger paw coming down over his mouth, muffling his words.
“You’re wasting a really nice dream by imagining the worst case scenario. By all means, keep at it, but I’m going exploring. Maybe there’s pirate treasure in those caves over there.”
We’re miles from the ocean, Eames thinks. Then he frowns. That objection sounded entirely too grown up.
“You’re probably right,” he says instead. And now that he’s listening for it - now that he wants it to be there- he can hear the sound of the sea, a distant (but not too distant) roar.
+++
“Where are we going?” Arthur asks, visibly stifling a yawn. “Eames, I’ve been traveling for the last ten hours, I just want to go home-”
Eames smiles. “Home?”
“Our apartment?” Arthur asks, like Eames is being dense. “With our bed in it? Where I can crash out for the next three days?”
“Say that again.”
“What? That I’m going to crash out for three days? Eames, you know this job was hell, you talked me down from shooting at least two of my team members in non-vital areas, and I’ve barely-”
“No, no,” Eames says, before Arthur can get worked up into a full-blown rant. “Before that, you arse.”
Arthur blinks. It takes a second, then he gets it. “Our bed.”
Eames’ smile becomes a grin without his permission. “If I weren’t driving, I think I’d probably just yank off your exquisitely tailored trousers and ravish you.”
Arthur’s recovered enough to say, “Well, if we were going back to our apartment and our bed, I’d be happy to let you. So long as you didn’t mind me sleeping through it.”
“As if I’d let you fall asleep while you’re impaled on my cock.”
Arthur’s glare is like a physical force in the car. “I take it back. I’m never letting you touch me again. And for the last time, where the fuck are we going?”
“It’s late June, and it’s a clear night, but it’s supposed to rain for the next few days.”
Arthur blinks. “Yeah, so?”
Eames pulls over and parks in a gravel turnout, grabs the blanket out from the backseat of the car, then opens his car door. “Come on,” he says, getting out.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Eames, I’m not up for going for a hike in the country-”
“Would you just pause your whinging for the moment? If you still want me to take you home in five minutes, I’ll do it, but just-” He swallows, suddenly unsure of himself, of this whole stupid plan. “In the meantime, can you just trust me?”
Arthur sighs. “All right,” he says. “But let me change out of my shoes, I just got these in Italy a few months ago, damn it-”
They start out again, Arthur now wearing a pair of sneakers. They hop over a weathered fence and walk out into the middle of a field. There’s a line of trees off to the west, and Eames can hear a brook murmuring nonsense somewhere nearby. He spreads out the blanket, and Arthur collapses on it. Eames lowers himself down a bit more gingerly.
“Gonna tell me what this is about yet?” Arthur asks.
“Just wait a second,” Eames says.
Arthur huffs a sigh, but he turns towards Eames, running a hand down his calf.
Eames smiles and points. “There,” he says.
Arthur sits up and looks around. For a moment, he looks confused and annoyed, but then he sees them.
Glow worms. Or, as Arthur would know them (and as Eames called them when he was still a bratty American boy named Calvin), fireflies. Dozens of them dot the field.
“Oh,” Arthur says. A simple sound, barely more than an exhalation.
“Sorry, I know it’s-”
“If you say this is stupid, I’m going to punch you in the diaphragm until you throw up.”
Arthur’s threats get hilariously specific when he doesn’t actually mean them. Eames shuts his mouth, smiling. Neither of them say anything for a long moment, watching the green lights wavering above the grass in companionable silence. Finally, Arthur gives a truly jaw-cracking yawn, so Eames lies down and pulls Arthur atop him.
“I’ll fall asleep,” Arthur warns.
“That’s okay,” Eames tells him. “I can carry you back to the car.”
It’s a sign of Arthur’s exhaustion that he doesn’t even object to that, just says, “I’ll probably drool on you.”
“I’m used to it.”
Arthur’s breathing slows, and his eyes slip shut. Eames listens to him, listens to the crickets singing in the fields, the brook, a far off animal cry, to the ocean of blood that’s crashing in his ears. He can feel a tiny wet spot forming on his shirt where Arthur is, indeed, beginning to drool on him.
I love you, he thinks, and it sets his heart beating like a jackhammer. And because Arthur set the pattern for confessing their feelings when one of them is already unconscious-
Because Eames is, in fact, crazy, and his response to any kind of terrifying scenario is to jump into it without any forethought-
Because there are former KGB agents and giant jellyfish and all manner of sad endings in the world-
Because of all these things, but mostly because the truth of these words is enough to make his blood run cold and adrenaline flood his system, he says it aloud:
“I love you.”
And of course, Arthur’s not actually asleep. Eames feels him grin against his chest. His heart now feels like it’s going to pound right out of his ribcage, just jump into Arthur’s hands like a frightened animal seeking shelter.
“I heard that,” Arthur mutters, blinking up at him. He puts his hand on Eames’ chest, above his panicked, thumping heart. “Calm down.”
“That was terrifying,” Eames says.
“I know, it’s okay,” Arthur says. “Say it again.”
Eames covers Arthur’s hand with his own. He can still feel the hammering rhythm of his pulse beneath them. “It’ll give me a heart attack if I even try.”
"It's okay," Arthur says again. He scoots up Eames’ chest, tucking his face into Eames’ neck. “I know CPR. I can revive you, if it comes to that.”