[Fic] For You the War Is Over (3/3)
For You the War Is Over (3/3)
Author: maybe77
Team: Angst
Prompts: fall, home
Word count: 2600 this part, 14,500 total
Rating: R-ish this part, NC-17 overall
Warnings:Physical pain/injury, angst, war themes, barebacking.
Summary: Eames is an RAF pilot shot down in German-occupied France during World War II; Arthur is the French resistance fighter who finds him.
A/N: The happy ending I promised. Cut text is a Winston Churchill quote.
Part One | Part Two
It was three months before Eames returned to France - by way of Normandy, then London, then his mother’s house near Peterborough. There were extensive debriefings, invasive medical exams, a tearful reunion and a little too much whiskey, all undercut by inescapable guilt and an oppressive sense of loss. November had begun to cast its chill over all of Western Europe by the time Eames had extricated himself from the clutches of both his mother, with promises to come home again soon, and the RAF, by virtue of a medical discharge and a medal of honor.
Thin, fog-like clouds were obscuring most of the light the moon could offer when he passed through the town square in Trélazé again. A damp chill was in the air and his heart was in his throat. But the farmhouse door was still locked, just as he left it. When he made his way inside, he found everything else as he had left it as well. The note was still on the table. The beds were still made. Arthur was still gone.
December had just come by the time he tracked down Mal and Dom in Paris; they’d returned after the resistance helped free the city a few months earlier. Following the contacts and information they gave him, Eames spent two months in the frozen countryside of eastern France searching out the handful of POW camps the Allies and the resistance had already liberated. There was no trace of Arthur. Not that Eames was surprised - the Germans cared little for keeping records of their prisoners, and it would have been unlikely that Arthur would give his real name anyway. He was searching for an irreplaceable needle in a whole country’s worth of hay.
When too much snow made it almost impossible for Eames to continue, he decided to fall back and regroup. The chances of finding Arthur this way were dismal; he needed a better approach. “Try the camps at Le Havre,” Mal said when Eames returned to Paris. “Our Allied contacts say they plan to filter the POWs they find through there, before they send them home.”
The Allies liberated - and nearly destroyed - Le Havre in mid-September, and promptly began using the city’s strategic location on the bank of the Seine as a staging ground for their own troops and supplies coming from across the Channel. Over a dozen massive tent cities had been established as more and more troops made their way into France to push the Western Front all the way back to Germany. By late winter, these cigarette camps - many were named after American cigarette brands like Chesterfield and Philip Morris - were seeing their tents replaced by barracks, mobile field kitchens replaced by mess halls. The Americans built hospitals to treat wounded soldiers coming back from the front and POWs as they were liberated from German camps, before sending them back to the U.S.
Eames headed for Lucky Strike, the largest of the camps, and volunteered with the Red Cross. It gave him the two things he needed: information, via the soldiers and POWs who came through the camp, and something to keep him busy, keep him sane. He bandaged wounds, administered medicines and asked questions. Where had these soldiers been? What had they seen? Invariably, they shook their heads when he told them he was looking for someone who’d been captured. No, they hadn’t seen anyone matching Arthur’s description, but they wished Eames luck, and there was always a trace of sadness in their voices, because even though they would not say it, they knew how likely it was that Eames would find him.
The soldiers told him stories of ambushes, of close combat, of days and days of marching with little food, less rest and no cover. They had been deafened by artillery fire, burned by the metal of their overheated rifles. They had lost limbs to shrapnel, and lost friends and brothers to a war they only fought so that it would end.
The prisoners told the stories that were hardest for Eames to hear. Every recollection of cramped barracks, meager rations, grueling work details, beatings and abuse, only led him to picture Arthur in their shoes, suffering under the whip or boot of a Nazi guard, lying bleeding and forgotten on the cold, hard ground. If Arthur came back at all, he would be bone-thin and bruised, Eames was sure. There would be scars, some that would heal slowly and some that would not heal at all.
Eames made his way through all the camps around Le Havre, asking after Arthur and finding only pitying looks in return. He stayed long enough at each to find a kind soul who would promise to watch for Arthur, to send for Eames if they found him. Eames left them each with a scrawled note for Arthur and what little of his hope he could spare. They smiled and nodded and promised, and Eames knew it was all he could ask for.
As the winter thawed into spring and replaced the frozen ground with sucking mud through which the Allied forces slogged closer and closer to Germany, even the image of a battered and emaciated Arthur became a hopeful one. The alternative was becoming the more and more likely truth as every day passed.
By April Eames was becoming numb. Nearly daily, new soldiers would arrive at Lucky Strike. Many were prisoners from places like Stalag Luft I and Oflag 79. None of them were Arthur. Yet every morning Eames would watch the transports arrive, leaning on boxes of medical supplies, smoking and scanning every man he could see. Every night Eames would collapse into bed, his body aching from the exhaustion he worked himself to. He prayed every night that tomorrow would be the day he found Arthur, but those prayers had become nothing more than habit now, memorized words that barely even registered their meanings in his mind.
The evening of April 28th was like any other. Eames was rewrapping the bandages for a private who had taken a bullet to his left arm in a firefight in Western France. He was young, maybe 20, and Eames was asking him about his family back home, trying to budge the sullen grimace on the soldier’s face. A nurse tapped him gently on the shoulder. “Sergeant Eames? There’s an aide here from Camp Tareyton, says he has an urgent message for you.”
Eames just stared at her for a moment. “Sergeant?” she said again.
Eames blinked. “Right, thank you. Could you…?” He nodded toward the bandages in his hands and she took them from him.
“He’s just up at the intake tent. Name’s Bristol I think.”
Eames called another thanks over his shoulder and hurried toward the intake tent, as fast as he could go without knocking over supplies, patients or volunteers. He’d met Bristol a few months back. Bristol had pocketed the note Eames gave him and promised to look for Arthur. He had to have some news. There couldn’t be any other reason for him to come all this way.
Eames' heart raced, and he ran faster to keep up with it. Bristol must have seen the wild look in his eyes when arrived, because he skipped any pleasantries. “I found him,” Bristol said, grabbing Eames’ arm. “He’s pretty banged up, but he’s alive. I gave him your note, told him I’d come find you right away.”
Eames stood there, looking right through Bristol and futilely trying to catch his breath. He’d spent so long keeping his hopes in check that he couldn’t quite believe it; it felt like a lifetime he’d been searching. “Sergeant?” Bristol said, his voice echoing in Eames’ ears. “I have a jeep, you can ride back with me if you want.”
***
Arthur looked like hell. Maybe not the worst Eames had feared, but not far from it. His arm was bandaged and splinted, he had a scar over his left eye, purple bruising along his collar, and his skin hung on his bones like it was a size too big. And that was only what Eames could see. He stopped in front of Arthur’s bed and could feel himself shaking, just like he did the day he found out Arthur was gone.
It was late by the time Bristol had gotten them back to Tareyton, and Arthur was asleep. Eames pulled a chair next to the bed and sat, watching Arthur breathe, watching dreams play across his eyelids, for close to an hour. He wanted to be the strong one this time, but everything in him threatened to give out and break down. When he couldn’t hold back anymore, he reached out and gently brushed his fingers over Arthur’s cheek. His skin was chilled, but it was real. Arthur was real and he was lying right here, breathing and close enough for Eames to touch. Eames was carefully wrapping his fingers around Arthur’s when suddenly Arthur squeezed his hand. “Eames?” Arthur’s voice was dry and hoarse, like his throat was coated with dust. When Eames looked up Arthur was watching him with a fuzzy smile. “Is that you?”
“Arthur…” was all Eames could say. There were a million thoughts in his mind, a million questions and a million things he wanted to tell Arthur, but they all bottlenecked in his throat. Instead he dipped his head and brought Arthur’s hand to his lips.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur said. “I never came back.”
Eames couldn’t help the stray tears that found their way down his cheeks. “You’re back now, love.”
Eames didn’t leave Arthur’s side for the next week. He’d walk with Arthur, out in the bright spring afternoons, keeping a slow pace to match Arthur’s pained limping and listening to Arthur describe the dank, cold barracks they’d kept him in. He would go to the mess hall with Arthur, eating spaghetti with meatballs while Arthur recalled how his main staples for the last nine months had been cabbage and potatoes, broken up only by the times he had nothing at all. The worst was when Eames would change Arthur’s bandages while Arthur recounted how he came by every cut and bruise and scar on his pale, soft skin.
One morning Eames came to the hospital barracks to find Arthur sitting on his bed, dressed in U.S. Army fatigues, talking with a nurse. The splint on his arm was gone and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes had returned. “Arthur?”
Arthur turned to him with a feeble but genuine smile. “They said I can go.”
Later that afternoon, in Riems, three hundred kilometers away, German emissaries signed an armistice of unconditional surrender. The war in Europe was over.
It took the entire day and a dozen hitched rides from soldiers and civilians alike to make their way back to Trélazé. Eames’ hands shook as he slid the key into the lock and opened the door of the farmhouse. Arthur hesitated, brow furrowed as he peered inside. “I was afraid I’d never see this place again,” he said quietly. “Sometimes I almost thought I’d dreamed it. I was afraid that if I ever made it out of there, I’d come back and find that none of this was real.”
As soon as they were inside, Eames pulled Arthur to him and kissed him properly, the way he hadn’t been able to since he’d found Arthur again. He wrapped his arms around Arthur and buried his face in Arthur’s neck and stayed like that for a long time. “Hey,” Arthur said softly, taking Eames’ hand in his own. “It’s over now. It’s all over now.”
“I thought I’d lost you,” Eames said in a voice stretched thin, as though it needed to wrap around everything he was feeling.
“I didn’t - ” Arthur began, then shook his head. He reached up and stroked trembling fingers along Eames’ stubbled cheek, then leaned in to kiss him again.
By nightfall, word of the German surrender had spread and townsfolk were reveling in the streets. Their songs and cheers served as background music as Eames carefully undressed Arthur and laid reverent kisses over every scar and lingering bruise. When Arthur’s breath began to hitch, when he began to arch his body off the bed, Eames pulled back.
“Eames,” Arthur said. “Don’t stop, please.”
Eames wanted Arthur, but more than that he didn’t want to add to Arthur’s pain. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Eames said.
Arthur’s laugh was short of breath. “That line doesn’t work, remember?”
Eames smiled tightly. “Arthur - ”
Before he could say more Arthur grabbed his hand. “Eames, you aren’t going to hurt me.” His eyes were earnest and imploring as he tugged Eames toward him. “Please, I just need… I missed you, Eames, I missed you so fucking much.”
“Oh, love,” Eames whispered, chest so tight it strangled his words. He leaned in to kiss Arthur, relishing the softness of his lips, the way they parted for him. He didn’t object when Arthur unbuttoned his shirt as they kissed, shifting to let Arthur push it back off his shoulders. By the time Arthur’s hands traced down his bare stomach to the button of his trousers, Eames was beyond protest. He shoved his pants off and stretched himself out over Arthur, savoring skin against skin but careful to hold up his own weight. Arthur wrapped his arms around Eames and rocked his hips up to slide their cocks against one another. Eames groaned and buried his face in Arthur’s neck, mouthing at his throat. “I missed your smell, how you taste.”
In the end Eames couldn’t help himself. Because Arthur asked for it, over and over, and because something deep in him needed this reconnection. He worked Arthur open gently, until Arthur was cursing him and pulling him down. When Eames slicked his cock and pressed inside, Arthur gripped his shoulders and clung tightly. Suddenly there was no war. There was nothing beyond the four walls surrounding them.
They moved together, slow, sinuous, the means more important than the end, relearning one another’s touch and seeking visceral reassurance that this was no dream. “Eames, Eames,” Arthur murmured in soft litany against the sounds of skin on skin and ragged breath, until he could no longer form words, making instead little needy noises that swelled into desperate cries as he came. When Eames came it was with a sob, almost afraid of the high of it, as though he wouldn’t be able to handle such pleasure after so much desolation. They lay together for a long while, reluctant to be separate, hearts still pounding long after their bodies had stopped moving.
“I think we should leave France,” Arthur said a little while later, as he lay with his head pillowed on Eames’ shoulder, tracing his fingers in vague patterns over Eames’ skin. “Go someplace we can start fresh. England, maybe, or America. I haven’t been home in six years.”
“Home,” Eames said, and wrapped his arm more tightly around Arthur. “That was the word.”
“What word?” Arthur asked
“The day you left, I said I’d think of a word for how I feel about you,” Eames said. “Without you, everything was just… wrong. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. That’s why I couldn’t stop looking for you.” He broke off, and in the absence of his voice the night’s calmness filled the room. “Now that I have you back,” he said softly, as though hesitant to disturb the peace that had settled over him, “we can go anywhere you like. Where makes no difference at all.”
Author: maybe77
Team: Angst
Prompts: fall, home
Word count: 2600 this part, 14,500 total
Rating: R-ish this part, NC-17 overall
Warnings:Physical pain/injury, angst, war themes, barebacking.
Summary: Eames is an RAF pilot shot down in German-occupied France during World War II; Arthur is the French resistance fighter who finds him.
A/N: The happy ending I promised. Cut text is a Winston Churchill quote.
Part One | Part Two
It was three months before Eames returned to France - by way of Normandy, then London, then his mother’s house near Peterborough. There were extensive debriefings, invasive medical exams, a tearful reunion and a little too much whiskey, all undercut by inescapable guilt and an oppressive sense of loss. November had begun to cast its chill over all of Western Europe by the time Eames had extricated himself from the clutches of both his mother, with promises to come home again soon, and the RAF, by virtue of a medical discharge and a medal of honor.
Thin, fog-like clouds were obscuring most of the light the moon could offer when he passed through the town square in Trélazé again. A damp chill was in the air and his heart was in his throat. But the farmhouse door was still locked, just as he left it. When he made his way inside, he found everything else as he had left it as well. The note was still on the table. The beds were still made. Arthur was still gone.
December had just come by the time he tracked down Mal and Dom in Paris; they’d returned after the resistance helped free the city a few months earlier. Following the contacts and information they gave him, Eames spent two months in the frozen countryside of eastern France searching out the handful of POW camps the Allies and the resistance had already liberated. There was no trace of Arthur. Not that Eames was surprised - the Germans cared little for keeping records of their prisoners, and it would have been unlikely that Arthur would give his real name anyway. He was searching for an irreplaceable needle in a whole country’s worth of hay.
When too much snow made it almost impossible for Eames to continue, he decided to fall back and regroup. The chances of finding Arthur this way were dismal; he needed a better approach. “Try the camps at Le Havre,” Mal said when Eames returned to Paris. “Our Allied contacts say they plan to filter the POWs they find through there, before they send them home.”
The Allies liberated - and nearly destroyed - Le Havre in mid-September, and promptly began using the city’s strategic location on the bank of the Seine as a staging ground for their own troops and supplies coming from across the Channel. Over a dozen massive tent cities had been established as more and more troops made their way into France to push the Western Front all the way back to Germany. By late winter, these cigarette camps - many were named after American cigarette brands like Chesterfield and Philip Morris - were seeing their tents replaced by barracks, mobile field kitchens replaced by mess halls. The Americans built hospitals to treat wounded soldiers coming back from the front and POWs as they were liberated from German camps, before sending them back to the U.S.
Eames headed for Lucky Strike, the largest of the camps, and volunteered with the Red Cross. It gave him the two things he needed: information, via the soldiers and POWs who came through the camp, and something to keep him busy, keep him sane. He bandaged wounds, administered medicines and asked questions. Where had these soldiers been? What had they seen? Invariably, they shook their heads when he told them he was looking for someone who’d been captured. No, they hadn’t seen anyone matching Arthur’s description, but they wished Eames luck, and there was always a trace of sadness in their voices, because even though they would not say it, they knew how likely it was that Eames would find him.
The soldiers told him stories of ambushes, of close combat, of days and days of marching with little food, less rest and no cover. They had been deafened by artillery fire, burned by the metal of their overheated rifles. They had lost limbs to shrapnel, and lost friends and brothers to a war they only fought so that it would end.
The prisoners told the stories that were hardest for Eames to hear. Every recollection of cramped barracks, meager rations, grueling work details, beatings and abuse, only led him to picture Arthur in their shoes, suffering under the whip or boot of a Nazi guard, lying bleeding and forgotten on the cold, hard ground. If Arthur came back at all, he would be bone-thin and bruised, Eames was sure. There would be scars, some that would heal slowly and some that would not heal at all.
Eames made his way through all the camps around Le Havre, asking after Arthur and finding only pitying looks in return. He stayed long enough at each to find a kind soul who would promise to watch for Arthur, to send for Eames if they found him. Eames left them each with a scrawled note for Arthur and what little of his hope he could spare. They smiled and nodded and promised, and Eames knew it was all he could ask for.
As the winter thawed into spring and replaced the frozen ground with sucking mud through which the Allied forces slogged closer and closer to Germany, even the image of a battered and emaciated Arthur became a hopeful one. The alternative was becoming the more and more likely truth as every day passed.
By April Eames was becoming numb. Nearly daily, new soldiers would arrive at Lucky Strike. Many were prisoners from places like Stalag Luft I and Oflag 79. None of them were Arthur. Yet every morning Eames would watch the transports arrive, leaning on boxes of medical supplies, smoking and scanning every man he could see. Every night Eames would collapse into bed, his body aching from the exhaustion he worked himself to. He prayed every night that tomorrow would be the day he found Arthur, but those prayers had become nothing more than habit now, memorized words that barely even registered their meanings in his mind.
The evening of April 28th was like any other. Eames was rewrapping the bandages for a private who had taken a bullet to his left arm in a firefight in Western France. He was young, maybe 20, and Eames was asking him about his family back home, trying to budge the sullen grimace on the soldier’s face. A nurse tapped him gently on the shoulder. “Sergeant Eames? There’s an aide here from Camp Tareyton, says he has an urgent message for you.”
Eames just stared at her for a moment. “Sergeant?” she said again.
Eames blinked. “Right, thank you. Could you…?” He nodded toward the bandages in his hands and she took them from him.
“He’s just up at the intake tent. Name’s Bristol I think.”
Eames called another thanks over his shoulder and hurried toward the intake tent, as fast as he could go without knocking over supplies, patients or volunteers. He’d met Bristol a few months back. Bristol had pocketed the note Eames gave him and promised to look for Arthur. He had to have some news. There couldn’t be any other reason for him to come all this way.
Eames' heart raced, and he ran faster to keep up with it. Bristol must have seen the wild look in his eyes when arrived, because he skipped any pleasantries. “I found him,” Bristol said, grabbing Eames’ arm. “He’s pretty banged up, but he’s alive. I gave him your note, told him I’d come find you right away.”
Eames stood there, looking right through Bristol and futilely trying to catch his breath. He’d spent so long keeping his hopes in check that he couldn’t quite believe it; it felt like a lifetime he’d been searching. “Sergeant?” Bristol said, his voice echoing in Eames’ ears. “I have a jeep, you can ride back with me if you want.”
***
Arthur looked like hell. Maybe not the worst Eames had feared, but not far from it. His arm was bandaged and splinted, he had a scar over his left eye, purple bruising along his collar, and his skin hung on his bones like it was a size too big. And that was only what Eames could see. He stopped in front of Arthur’s bed and could feel himself shaking, just like he did the day he found out Arthur was gone.
It was late by the time Bristol had gotten them back to Tareyton, and Arthur was asleep. Eames pulled a chair next to the bed and sat, watching Arthur breathe, watching dreams play across his eyelids, for close to an hour. He wanted to be the strong one this time, but everything in him threatened to give out and break down. When he couldn’t hold back anymore, he reached out and gently brushed his fingers over Arthur’s cheek. His skin was chilled, but it was real. Arthur was real and he was lying right here, breathing and close enough for Eames to touch. Eames was carefully wrapping his fingers around Arthur’s when suddenly Arthur squeezed his hand. “Eames?” Arthur’s voice was dry and hoarse, like his throat was coated with dust. When Eames looked up Arthur was watching him with a fuzzy smile. “Is that you?”
“Arthur…” was all Eames could say. There were a million thoughts in his mind, a million questions and a million things he wanted to tell Arthur, but they all bottlenecked in his throat. Instead he dipped his head and brought Arthur’s hand to his lips.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur said. “I never came back.”
Eames couldn’t help the stray tears that found their way down his cheeks. “You’re back now, love.”
Eames didn’t leave Arthur’s side for the next week. He’d walk with Arthur, out in the bright spring afternoons, keeping a slow pace to match Arthur’s pained limping and listening to Arthur describe the dank, cold barracks they’d kept him in. He would go to the mess hall with Arthur, eating spaghetti with meatballs while Arthur recalled how his main staples for the last nine months had been cabbage and potatoes, broken up only by the times he had nothing at all. The worst was when Eames would change Arthur’s bandages while Arthur recounted how he came by every cut and bruise and scar on his pale, soft skin.
One morning Eames came to the hospital barracks to find Arthur sitting on his bed, dressed in U.S. Army fatigues, talking with a nurse. The splint on his arm was gone and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes had returned. “Arthur?”
Arthur turned to him with a feeble but genuine smile. “They said I can go.”
Later that afternoon, in Riems, three hundred kilometers away, German emissaries signed an armistice of unconditional surrender. The war in Europe was over.
It took the entire day and a dozen hitched rides from soldiers and civilians alike to make their way back to Trélazé. Eames’ hands shook as he slid the key into the lock and opened the door of the farmhouse. Arthur hesitated, brow furrowed as he peered inside. “I was afraid I’d never see this place again,” he said quietly. “Sometimes I almost thought I’d dreamed it. I was afraid that if I ever made it out of there, I’d come back and find that none of this was real.”
As soon as they were inside, Eames pulled Arthur to him and kissed him properly, the way he hadn’t been able to since he’d found Arthur again. He wrapped his arms around Arthur and buried his face in Arthur’s neck and stayed like that for a long time. “Hey,” Arthur said softly, taking Eames’ hand in his own. “It’s over now. It’s all over now.”
“I thought I’d lost you,” Eames said in a voice stretched thin, as though it needed to wrap around everything he was feeling.
“I didn’t - ” Arthur began, then shook his head. He reached up and stroked trembling fingers along Eames’ stubbled cheek, then leaned in to kiss him again.
By nightfall, word of the German surrender had spread and townsfolk were reveling in the streets. Their songs and cheers served as background music as Eames carefully undressed Arthur and laid reverent kisses over every scar and lingering bruise. When Arthur’s breath began to hitch, when he began to arch his body off the bed, Eames pulled back.
“Eames,” Arthur said. “Don’t stop, please.”
Eames wanted Arthur, but more than that he didn’t want to add to Arthur’s pain. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Eames said.
Arthur’s laugh was short of breath. “That line doesn’t work, remember?”
Eames smiled tightly. “Arthur - ”
Before he could say more Arthur grabbed his hand. “Eames, you aren’t going to hurt me.” His eyes were earnest and imploring as he tugged Eames toward him. “Please, I just need… I missed you, Eames, I missed you so fucking much.”
“Oh, love,” Eames whispered, chest so tight it strangled his words. He leaned in to kiss Arthur, relishing the softness of his lips, the way they parted for him. He didn’t object when Arthur unbuttoned his shirt as they kissed, shifting to let Arthur push it back off his shoulders. By the time Arthur’s hands traced down his bare stomach to the button of his trousers, Eames was beyond protest. He shoved his pants off and stretched himself out over Arthur, savoring skin against skin but careful to hold up his own weight. Arthur wrapped his arms around Eames and rocked his hips up to slide their cocks against one another. Eames groaned and buried his face in Arthur’s neck, mouthing at his throat. “I missed your smell, how you taste.”
In the end Eames couldn’t help himself. Because Arthur asked for it, over and over, and because something deep in him needed this reconnection. He worked Arthur open gently, until Arthur was cursing him and pulling him down. When Eames slicked his cock and pressed inside, Arthur gripped his shoulders and clung tightly. Suddenly there was no war. There was nothing beyond the four walls surrounding them.
They moved together, slow, sinuous, the means more important than the end, relearning one another’s touch and seeking visceral reassurance that this was no dream. “Eames, Eames,” Arthur murmured in soft litany against the sounds of skin on skin and ragged breath, until he could no longer form words, making instead little needy noises that swelled into desperate cries as he came. When Eames came it was with a sob, almost afraid of the high of it, as though he wouldn’t be able to handle such pleasure after so much desolation. They lay together for a long while, reluctant to be separate, hearts still pounding long after their bodies had stopped moving.
“I think we should leave France,” Arthur said a little while later, as he lay with his head pillowed on Eames’ shoulder, tracing his fingers in vague patterns over Eames’ skin. “Go someplace we can start fresh. England, maybe, or America. I haven’t been home in six years.”
“Home,” Eames said, and wrapped his arm more tightly around Arthur. “That was the word.”
“What word?” Arthur asked
“The day you left, I said I’d think of a word for how I feel about you,” Eames said. “Without you, everything was just… wrong. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. That’s why I couldn’t stop looking for you.” He broke off, and in the absence of his voice the night’s calmness filled the room. “Now that I have you back,” he said softly, as though hesitant to disturb the peace that had settled over him, “we can go anywhere you like. Where makes no difference at all.”