fic: Flight risk
Title: Flight risk
Author: ohmydarlingdear
Team: AAAAAAANGST
Prompt: lies
Word count: approx. 1,950
Rating: PG
Warnings: possibly emotional abuse, though he doesn't quite do it intentionally
Summary: Sometimes, Arthur just packs up his belongings and leaves, disappearing for weeks on end without any sign that he's still alive. Eames doesn't know if he can take much more of this.
A/N: this is also, I guess, a fill for this prompt at inception_kink (this is allowed, right? I hope it is)
This happens every so often, this way Arthur sometimes will pack up his belongings and run without warning, without telling anyone where he’s going, and just disappear for weeks on end. No one knows what he does during these times (maybe he’s working low profile jobs, maybe he’s stealing fine jewelry like he used to before dream sharing, maybe he’s just splurging on expensive clothing and delicious food), but he always comes back in one piece, no different than when he left except for maybe with a few more or fewer belongings carried with him, and maybe a handful of cuts and bruises for good measure.
It’s a little difficult for Eames to deal with, how Arthur comes and goes so easily, like he’ll never be tethered down by anything or anyone. Arthur runs like he’s worried he’ll never have enough time for everything life has to offer, runs like he’s afraid to pause for even one moment for fear of missing something fantastic. And Eames gets this, he really does, because you have to be the adventurous type to go into dream sharing in the first place, but this obsessive way Arthur dashes to all corners of the earth at breakneck speed, just running and running and running like he’ll never, never stop, this doesn’t make sense to Eames.
“Look,” Arthur had said when he and Eames had first started seeing each other. “If we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to understand something about me. There are going to be times when I just need to go, and you can’t stop me. Don’t try to find me; don’t try to follow me. I’ll come back eventually. I always do.”
And Eames had agreed, because at the time, he’d thought ‘well, how bad can it be?’ But then the first time Arthur had left, three months later, at two in the morning, he’d just packed up his things and left without so much as a goodbye, and Eames hadn’t known what hit him. Eames had tried to be understanding about it, getting that okay, maybe Arthur just needed his space and he was entitled to that, but then a week had passed and Eames hadn’t heard from Arthur at all. He’d tried calling Arthur, but the number had been disconnected.
Eames had tried Cobb next, because Cobb had known Arthur for the longest, but all Eames had gotten was a tired, “Leave it alone, Eames. He doesn’t want to be found.”
Arthur had finally come back two and a half weeks later in a brand new suit that made his eyes look too dark, with a new scar on his forearm he wouldn’t explain.
“Just let it go,” Arthur had said when Eames had tried to press for answers. “It’s not a big deal.”
Eames had wanted to shout, wanted to scream that this isn’t how relationships are supposed to work, this isn’t how you show someone that you care for them, but he’d bit his tongue and kept silent because Arthur had that look again, that look like a bowstring pulled taught, ready to snap. And then Arthur had smiled, a dimple pressing into his cheek, suddenly warm and vibrant and everything Eames had fallen in love with, and Eames had almost forgiven him on the spot.
“Did you miss me?” Arthur had asked quietly, curling easily into Eames’ arms.
“So, so very much, darling,” Eames had murmured into Arthur’s hair, almost forgetting that he’d been angry with Arthur in the first place. “I was so worried about you.”
Arthur had smiled softly and reached up to touch Eames’ cheek, pressing a light kiss to Eames’ mouth, and murmured, “I’m sorry” like he’d meant it, like a promise. But then, a few short weeks later, Arthur had gone and disappeared again, without warning, without a trace.
“You can’t just do this,” Eames confronts Arthur finally, some several months later when Arthur actually is home for once, in the modest little apartment in London that they share (well, sort of, anyways, sometimes). “You’re not the only one who’s invested anything in this relationship.”
Arthur’s reading the newspaper, sipping quietly at his morning coffee, and he doesn’t even look at Eames when he says, “Then break up with me.”
Eames blinks, thrown off kilter by Arthur’s response. “What?” he asks, absolutely dumbfounded. A dull ache burns in his chest. “You don’t really mean that.”
Arthur sighs and sets the paper down to look at Eames with very sharp eyes. “Sure I do,” he says casually, as if this is something people discuss all the time over morning coffee and pancakes. “Isn’t that what people do? They’re unhappy in a relationship, so they leave.”
Eames hopes Arthur isn’t insinuating that he actually wants Eames to leave. “Is that why you leave?” Eames asks.
Arthur thinks about this for a moment, and in that time, Eames feels like he can’t breathe.
“No,” Arthur says finally. “I’m plenty happy. I like this.”
“You like running off in the dead of the night like you think you’re being chased?” Eames asks, suddenly angry that Arthur doesn’t seem to have the slightest regard for how Eames feels about this whole situation. “You like that you don’t even get to see the man you’re supposedly with for more than half the year? You like that?”
Arthur stares impassively at Eames for a moment. “You don’t,” he says.
“Well, of course I don’t!” Eames exclaims, jumping up out of his seat in anger. His chair tips over and falls to the floor with a loud crash. “You never tell me anything! How am I supposed to feel?”
“Eames, please sit down,” Arthur says levelly, voice too soft for how angry Eames is.
“Do you have any idea how bloody frustrating it is, just watching you leave and knowing that I’ll probably not see you for the next month?” Eames demands, words harsh and inelegant. “Do you have any idea how frightening it is not hearing from you for that long? You could be dead for all I know. What would I do then?”
“Eames, please,” Arthur says again, all calm and cool composure, but the razors are beginning to creep into his voice. “Sit down. We can talk about this.”
Eames lets out an annoyed huff but goes to right his chair and then sits down anyways. “You can’t keep doing this, Arthur,” Eames says. “I don’t know how much more I can take before I lose my mind.”
Arthur takes a long, deep breath, and is quiet for a long moment, considering, evaluating, calculating. “Relationships are about compromise,” he says reasonably. He reaches over to touch his fingertips to Eames’ knuckles. “I’m willing to make an effort to cut back on my… spontaneous trips, since it bothers you so much. I’ll try to stop. We’ll spend more time together.”
Eames lets out a breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. He hates Arthur a little for making it sound that simple, because he knows it’s really not. It’s not, because this way Arthur runs is ingrained in every fiber of his being; Arthur couldn’t sit still even if his life depended on it.
“Eames?”
Arthur’s looking at him with wide eyes now, looking impossibly innocent and vulnerable in a way that makes Eames chest feel tight. Eames hates how Arthur can do this, how he can be so removed and distant one moment and then switch so suddenly to this, where he simply oozes warmth, the next. Eames sometimes wonders if maybe Arthur has some sort of personality disorder, because it should not be possible for one person to encompass both fronts Arthur wears, the loving, cuddly, affectionate Arthur that Eames is helplessly in love with and the detached, severe Arthur that Eames makes himself put up with because he can’t bear to let Arthur go.
“I never want to hurt you, Eames,” Arthur says quietly, as if he’s afraid Eames will snap at him again. “I’m sorry that’s what I end up doing.”
Eames forces a smile and shakes his head. “It’s fine,” he says, even though it’s not, even though he sometimes feels like a hole’s been punched through his chest. “Just… just promise me you’ll try.”
Arthur smiles, his expression so, so soft. “I promise,” he says, and Eames believes him.
And for a little while, everything is alright. Arthur and Eames work a handful of jobs together and splurge on a two week long trip to Fiji to celebrate their successes. Arthur laughs when Eames buys a ridiculous tropical patterned shirt from a street vendor in Fiji and he gets terribly sunburned when he forgets to put on sunscreen and they spend an entire day at the beach. And to Eames, who’s always been something of a romantic, this feels a little like a honeymoon, a little like Arthur’s saying he’s ready to finally have a life with Eames instead of running away every time they get too close. So they drink a lot of wine and sample a lot of local cuisine and smile way too much, and then Fiji ends and Arthur vanishes like a puff of smoke. Eames just wakes up one morning and Arthur’s nowhere to be found, and that familiar weight settles back into his chest, that phantom ache that Eames can’t ever be rid of when Arthur’s gone like this.
Arthur comes back exactly seventeen days later. He has a new watch and five stitches in his left leg. Eames is waiting when he walks through the door, glaring angrily at him over a glass of scotch.
“Hello,” Arthur smiles, soft around the edges as if he hasn’t just fallen off the face of the earth for two and a half weeks.
“You left,” Eames says shortly.
Arthur’s cheerful expression starts to fade. “Yes,” he says. “So?”
Eames feels something break inside him, feels a shattering in his bones so deep that he knows he’ll never quite recover from it, the realization that Arthur really doesn’t care enough to change, to even try to hide the fact that he doesn’t care.
“You promised you wouldn’t do that anymore,” Eames says, but his voice sounds small and childish, even to his own ears.
Arthur sighs and sets down his bag, shrugging off his coat and hanging it up. He reaches back down to his bag and pulls out something round and silver.
“I got you something,” Arthur says as he approaches Eames in the living room.
He holds his hand out to show Eames; it’s a new pocket watch to replace the one Eames lost a few jobs back, and it’s lovely, but Eames hardly even looks at it.
“You promised,” Eames says again, with more edge this time so Arthur can’t sidestep him again.
Arthur draws in a tired breath and exhales sharply. He sets the pocket watch down on the coffee table. Eames keeps his eyes trained on Arthur, forcing him to speak even though Eames knows that what Arthur says next could very well break him. Arthur could say that Eames is being completely selfish about this and that he thinks Eames is an ass for that. Arthur could say that this obviously isn’t working and that next time he leaves, he’s leaving for good. Arthur could say that he’s never cared for Eames at all, that Eames has been silly to think that what they have is any more than a casual fling. But Arthur ends up saying none of those things. He says something much more concise and simple but at the same time, something that, somehow, feels even worse than any of those things would have.
“I lied.”
Author: ohmydarlingdear
Team: AAAAAAANGST
Prompt: lies
Word count: approx. 1,950
Rating: PG
Warnings: possibly emotional abuse, though he doesn't quite do it intentionally
Summary: Sometimes, Arthur just packs up his belongings and leaves, disappearing for weeks on end without any sign that he's still alive. Eames doesn't know if he can take much more of this.
A/N: this is also, I guess, a fill for this prompt at inception_kink (this is allowed, right? I hope it is)
This happens every so often, this way Arthur sometimes will pack up his belongings and run without warning, without telling anyone where he’s going, and just disappear for weeks on end. No one knows what he does during these times (maybe he’s working low profile jobs, maybe he’s stealing fine jewelry like he used to before dream sharing, maybe he’s just splurging on expensive clothing and delicious food), but he always comes back in one piece, no different than when he left except for maybe with a few more or fewer belongings carried with him, and maybe a handful of cuts and bruises for good measure.
It’s a little difficult for Eames to deal with, how Arthur comes and goes so easily, like he’ll never be tethered down by anything or anyone. Arthur runs like he’s worried he’ll never have enough time for everything life has to offer, runs like he’s afraid to pause for even one moment for fear of missing something fantastic. And Eames gets this, he really does, because you have to be the adventurous type to go into dream sharing in the first place, but this obsessive way Arthur dashes to all corners of the earth at breakneck speed, just running and running and running like he’ll never, never stop, this doesn’t make sense to Eames.
“Look,” Arthur had said when he and Eames had first started seeing each other. “If we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to understand something about me. There are going to be times when I just need to go, and you can’t stop me. Don’t try to find me; don’t try to follow me. I’ll come back eventually. I always do.”
And Eames had agreed, because at the time, he’d thought ‘well, how bad can it be?’ But then the first time Arthur had left, three months later, at two in the morning, he’d just packed up his things and left without so much as a goodbye, and Eames hadn’t known what hit him. Eames had tried to be understanding about it, getting that okay, maybe Arthur just needed his space and he was entitled to that, but then a week had passed and Eames hadn’t heard from Arthur at all. He’d tried calling Arthur, but the number had been disconnected.
Eames had tried Cobb next, because Cobb had known Arthur for the longest, but all Eames had gotten was a tired, “Leave it alone, Eames. He doesn’t want to be found.”
Arthur had finally come back two and a half weeks later in a brand new suit that made his eyes look too dark, with a new scar on his forearm he wouldn’t explain.
“Just let it go,” Arthur had said when Eames had tried to press for answers. “It’s not a big deal.”
Eames had wanted to shout, wanted to scream that this isn’t how relationships are supposed to work, this isn’t how you show someone that you care for them, but he’d bit his tongue and kept silent because Arthur had that look again, that look like a bowstring pulled taught, ready to snap. And then Arthur had smiled, a dimple pressing into his cheek, suddenly warm and vibrant and everything Eames had fallen in love with, and Eames had almost forgiven him on the spot.
“Did you miss me?” Arthur had asked quietly, curling easily into Eames’ arms.
“So, so very much, darling,” Eames had murmured into Arthur’s hair, almost forgetting that he’d been angry with Arthur in the first place. “I was so worried about you.”
Arthur had smiled softly and reached up to touch Eames’ cheek, pressing a light kiss to Eames’ mouth, and murmured, “I’m sorry” like he’d meant it, like a promise. But then, a few short weeks later, Arthur had gone and disappeared again, without warning, without a trace.
“You can’t just do this,” Eames confronts Arthur finally, some several months later when Arthur actually is home for once, in the modest little apartment in London that they share (well, sort of, anyways, sometimes). “You’re not the only one who’s invested anything in this relationship.”
Arthur’s reading the newspaper, sipping quietly at his morning coffee, and he doesn’t even look at Eames when he says, “Then break up with me.”
Eames blinks, thrown off kilter by Arthur’s response. “What?” he asks, absolutely dumbfounded. A dull ache burns in his chest. “You don’t really mean that.”
Arthur sighs and sets the paper down to look at Eames with very sharp eyes. “Sure I do,” he says casually, as if this is something people discuss all the time over morning coffee and pancakes. “Isn’t that what people do? They’re unhappy in a relationship, so they leave.”
Eames hopes Arthur isn’t insinuating that he actually wants Eames to leave. “Is that why you leave?” Eames asks.
Arthur thinks about this for a moment, and in that time, Eames feels like he can’t breathe.
“No,” Arthur says finally. “I’m plenty happy. I like this.”
“You like running off in the dead of the night like you think you’re being chased?” Eames asks, suddenly angry that Arthur doesn’t seem to have the slightest regard for how Eames feels about this whole situation. “You like that you don’t even get to see the man you’re supposedly with for more than half the year? You like that?”
Arthur stares impassively at Eames for a moment. “You don’t,” he says.
“Well, of course I don’t!” Eames exclaims, jumping up out of his seat in anger. His chair tips over and falls to the floor with a loud crash. “You never tell me anything! How am I supposed to feel?”
“Eames, please sit down,” Arthur says levelly, voice too soft for how angry Eames is.
“Do you have any idea how bloody frustrating it is, just watching you leave and knowing that I’ll probably not see you for the next month?” Eames demands, words harsh and inelegant. “Do you have any idea how frightening it is not hearing from you for that long? You could be dead for all I know. What would I do then?”
“Eames, please,” Arthur says again, all calm and cool composure, but the razors are beginning to creep into his voice. “Sit down. We can talk about this.”
Eames lets out an annoyed huff but goes to right his chair and then sits down anyways. “You can’t keep doing this, Arthur,” Eames says. “I don’t know how much more I can take before I lose my mind.”
Arthur takes a long, deep breath, and is quiet for a long moment, considering, evaluating, calculating. “Relationships are about compromise,” he says reasonably. He reaches over to touch his fingertips to Eames’ knuckles. “I’m willing to make an effort to cut back on my… spontaneous trips, since it bothers you so much. I’ll try to stop. We’ll spend more time together.”
Eames lets out a breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. He hates Arthur a little for making it sound that simple, because he knows it’s really not. It’s not, because this way Arthur runs is ingrained in every fiber of his being; Arthur couldn’t sit still even if his life depended on it.
“Eames?”
Arthur’s looking at him with wide eyes now, looking impossibly innocent and vulnerable in a way that makes Eames chest feel tight. Eames hates how Arthur can do this, how he can be so removed and distant one moment and then switch so suddenly to this, where he simply oozes warmth, the next. Eames sometimes wonders if maybe Arthur has some sort of personality disorder, because it should not be possible for one person to encompass both fronts Arthur wears, the loving, cuddly, affectionate Arthur that Eames is helplessly in love with and the detached, severe Arthur that Eames makes himself put up with because he can’t bear to let Arthur go.
“I never want to hurt you, Eames,” Arthur says quietly, as if he’s afraid Eames will snap at him again. “I’m sorry that’s what I end up doing.”
Eames forces a smile and shakes his head. “It’s fine,” he says, even though it’s not, even though he sometimes feels like a hole’s been punched through his chest. “Just… just promise me you’ll try.”
Arthur smiles, his expression so, so soft. “I promise,” he says, and Eames believes him.
And for a little while, everything is alright. Arthur and Eames work a handful of jobs together and splurge on a two week long trip to Fiji to celebrate their successes. Arthur laughs when Eames buys a ridiculous tropical patterned shirt from a street vendor in Fiji and he gets terribly sunburned when he forgets to put on sunscreen and they spend an entire day at the beach. And to Eames, who’s always been something of a romantic, this feels a little like a honeymoon, a little like Arthur’s saying he’s ready to finally have a life with Eames instead of running away every time they get too close. So they drink a lot of wine and sample a lot of local cuisine and smile way too much, and then Fiji ends and Arthur vanishes like a puff of smoke. Eames just wakes up one morning and Arthur’s nowhere to be found, and that familiar weight settles back into his chest, that phantom ache that Eames can’t ever be rid of when Arthur’s gone like this.
Arthur comes back exactly seventeen days later. He has a new watch and five stitches in his left leg. Eames is waiting when he walks through the door, glaring angrily at him over a glass of scotch.
“Hello,” Arthur smiles, soft around the edges as if he hasn’t just fallen off the face of the earth for two and a half weeks.
“You left,” Eames says shortly.
Arthur’s cheerful expression starts to fade. “Yes,” he says. “So?”
Eames feels something break inside him, feels a shattering in his bones so deep that he knows he’ll never quite recover from it, the realization that Arthur really doesn’t care enough to change, to even try to hide the fact that he doesn’t care.
“You promised you wouldn’t do that anymore,” Eames says, but his voice sounds small and childish, even to his own ears.
Arthur sighs and sets down his bag, shrugging off his coat and hanging it up. He reaches back down to his bag and pulls out something round and silver.
“I got you something,” Arthur says as he approaches Eames in the living room.
He holds his hand out to show Eames; it’s a new pocket watch to replace the one Eames lost a few jobs back, and it’s lovely, but Eames hardly even looks at it.
“You promised,” Eames says again, with more edge this time so Arthur can’t sidestep him again.
Arthur draws in a tired breath and exhales sharply. He sets the pocket watch down on the coffee table. Eames keeps his eyes trained on Arthur, forcing him to speak even though Eames knows that what Arthur says next could very well break him. Arthur could say that Eames is being completely selfish about this and that he thinks Eames is an ass for that. Arthur could say that this obviously isn’t working and that next time he leaves, he’s leaving for good. Arthur could say that he’s never cared for Eames at all, that Eames has been silly to think that what they have is any more than a casual fling. But Arthur ends up saying none of those things. He says something much more concise and simple but at the same time, something that, somehow, feels even worse than any of those things would have.
“I lied.”