Fic: And It's Gonna Be Me (Eames/Arthur)
A fill! Whew it's been a while. What a slacker. Anyway, this one is not as schmoopy as you've probably gotten used to from me. It's er, not at all schmoopy except for like, one tiny lull in the middle. If child abuse or violence triggers you, you, er, might not want to read. The child being Arthur, and the child being a teenager, not a little child. Um. Yeah.
The fill is a fill for this prompt over at inception_kink . I hope you like it, OP. And other people. I kind of forgot a big part of the prompt when I was originally writing it and went over it today a lot trying to like, write in certain characters and situations that I totally blanked on having in there. Er. Yeah. Here it is, though! Maybe there will be an epilogue up tomorrow?
_*_
Cold, calculated and odd. No one knew what to write in his yearbooks. People talked about him, not to him; they couldn’t figure him out, so they just whispered and parted like the Red Sea when he passed and ignored him with a sort of awed confusion, pushing him to the sides of their buzzing brains: forgotten. Teenagers can be so very cruel.
Arthur? Oh yes, they know him. They know of him. He was that strange, skinny, dark-haired kid in their math class, right? Of course he was. Just leave it at that. People didn’t try getting too close. Maybe they were scared. Maybe teenagers really are somewhat less than human; humanity is learned, developed, not something you’re born with. And so they answer oh yes, they know of him. But it’s not like they, you know, know him on a personal level, or anything. That would be weird, and we can’t have that. So he’s odd and he’s left alone and some of the girls may pine after his sharp good looks and silent intelligence, his enigmatic distant aura, but no one ever cares to get close. Until Eames.
“You’ll make an outcast of yourself if you’re seen with me,” Arthur says quietly to the curious new boy one day early on in their high school careers. He recognizes him out of the corner of his eye: that new transfer student from somewhere in Britain. He doesn’t know precisely where. He wasn’t really paying attention, and he doesn’t keep up on gossip.
“Oh?” the Brit asks, grinning a lopsided, toothy grin. “And why’s that then?”
“They think I’m odd,” Arthur replies, not looking up fully from the book he is reading to acknowledge Eames. Maybe if he ignores him he’ll leave and not ruin himself by trying to be friends with Arthur, he thinks.
The other boy keeps on smiling, a smile that proves some stereotypes may still have basis in fact, teeth all mussed and in different directions: Arthur thinks it’s somewhat charming in its classlessness. “Well, are you?” he asks.
Arthur smiles in spite of himself. “Perhaps,” he admits.
“We’re all a bit odd, mate. S’what makes us human.”
“Tell that to the sheep,” Arthur retorts.
“Bollocks on the sheep.” Another infectious grin. “I’m Eames, by the way.”
“Arthur.”
The introduction, sealed with a handshake and an exchange of smiles, breaks down an unseen, unspoken barrier between them; Eames places himself at Arthur’s right hand, a place he will not vacate after that moment. He responds to the disdainful stares of a flock of on looking cheerleader-types with a rude hand gesture and turns away from them.
“So,” he begins, “Arthur, d’you reckon all American girls are as shit-stupid as that lot?”
Arthur grins as the flock disperses.
_*_
It’s a perfect partnership. Each morning, they meet at the bus station and Arthur goes over (read: does) Eames’ homework for him while they wait for the route to take them off to school. They ride in the back of the bus, three seats between them and everyone else, an impenetrable wall of companionship, and, naturally, oddness.
Each memorizes the other’s schedule, coordinating effortless to meet in the halls after each bell ring, escorting each other to and from their classes. And though they still eat lunch alone, they now do so together. If others occasionally think to get in with them, then Eames and Arthur don’t notice, or pretend not to, far too wrapped up in each other to give a shit about anyone else anymore.
Calculating and odd, maybe, but Eames knows that cold, Arthur is not. Behind his smiles, more frequent now than when they first met (Eames takes some credit for that), something darker always hides. Turtleneck sweatshirts and long sleeves and clumsiness. Always clumsiness. If Arthur were to be believed, then he would be the clumsiest boy in America. Eames doesn’t ask questions. Eames learns not to ask, just to watch, to care, to know. Eames always knows.
When the school bell rings and releases them, Pavlov’s dogs in flocks and flocks, endless, they go to Eames’ house most days. Eames’ house or their own separate ways. Never Arthur’s. Eames knows the address by heart though he’s never been inside and he knows what Arthur never tells him - Arthur’s house is not a home: it’s a prison.
_*_
On cold winter mornings when money is tight and whiskey is cheap, Arthur appears at the station early, already there, blowing on his hands to keep them warm, when Eames arrives. His cheeks are flushed, his expression unreadable. He doesn’t seem to have slept. He may look terrible, but to Eames he is always this - Arthur is glowing. Red, white, black, and blue.
“You know you can come over to my place when this happens,” Eames tells him. No questions. Just facts. Eames knows. “You know my mum wouldn’t mind having you about more.”
Arthur brushes him off. “Your accent is beginning to go,” he informs Eames.
“Lucky I still have my good looks,” Eames quips. But he hasn’t forgotten. Arthur pulls his scarf up, covering the last traces of what could only have been a hard evening at home. He’s so subtle in the way he hurts him that Eames feels like it’s never big enough to be able to save him. If Eames tells anyone, Arthur might end up even worse off. What’s the words of one stupid kid against a parent, or a teacher, or Arthur begging him to keep it a secret? Nothing.
Arthur picks up a handful of snow off the ground and crushes it into Eames’ hair. They wind up missing the bus that morning, but instead of facing the questions, Arthur suggests they cut school entirely and go to the movies.
“The cheap ones, of course,” Arthur clarifies.
Eames grins. “Thought you’d never ask. I knew someday my bad influence would rub off on you.”
When, a week later, Arthur is already sitting in Eames’ kitchen, frying himself an egg, when Eames rolls groggily out of bed and trudges downstairs, Eames is not surprised that it’s happened again: he’s only surprised that Arthur actually showed at his house. Eames waves sleepily. Arthur turns, and Eames sees the rest of his face. Arthur smiles weakly, a single, slight ripple in a sea of wrong. His eye is nearly swollen shut and Eames swears there is blood dried in the corner of his mouth.
“Jesus, Arthur,” Eames mutters, half running into the kitchen. He doesn’t ask ‘Are you okay?’ or ‘What happened?” because it isn’t necessary. Eames knows.
“I’m okay,” Arthur insists, sprinkling salt into the pan.
“No you aren’t.”
“You know me,” Arthur asserts. “I fell. Clumsy.”
“You’re not bloody okay,” Eames whispers, his voice cracking the tiniest bit with the weight of all the crying he’s never let himself do for Arthur because damn it, boys just don’t cry, and then his arms are there, holding Arthur’s slight frame against him like a child holding its favourite doll, and just as delicate. And Arthur just stands there, willing Eames not to worry, muttering about how he swears he walked into the door again.
“It’s not your business anyway,“ Arthur says. Eames walks out of the kitchen.
Arthur flips his egg in total silence.
_*_
Somewhere between sophomore and junior year, the line is blurred between friendship and something even more. Eames’ mother is out of town for some reason or another, and Arthur spends all glorious four of them with Eames and only Eames. It’s not as if anyone at his house notices he’s missing.
“The old man’s probably glad I’m gone,” Arthur tells Eames. Eames suggests they see what’s on On Demand, but they wind up watching something on the History channel about the French Revolution that Arthur picks out.
On the second night, Eames unearths and breaks into a box of cheap, pink wine, and they drink until they can taste nothing but rebellion that costs only eight ninety-five. Life is not the same after that. The nights are rife with sloppy alcohol kisses, sticky sweet on their lips and with singing and the sound of secrets melting into nothing. The days are sunny and bright and full of handholding that suddenly feels like daring the world to even try and touch them, because when you’re young and in love, you’re fucking immortal. All the barriers are gone. No holds are barred. Except one. Eames doesn’t ask any questions.
It is a glorious summer. Eames’ mother takes the three of them to the beach to stay in a cabin owned by one of Eames’ more obscure uncles for a week in August. They frolic like there is no world beyond the end of the shore, that the highway leads to nowhere, and that there is no school and no hate and no life as usual waiting for them Monday morning when they’re home again. Under the stars, cold ocean lapping at their toes, they kiss and touch and they die their little deaths until the sun comes up and they are freezing and naked and it doesn’t matter. The moon blushes and hides her face behind the clouds to give them privacy.
When they come back, Arthur’s father has a new girlfriend and a new job at the construction company where he works; Arthur spends most nights at Eames’ house anyway. But it seems like maybe, maybe from now on, everything is going to be alright.
Still, when the school year starts back up again, Eames goes out for the rugby team, just in case.
_*_
School days are more bearable punctuated by kisses stolen in bathrooms and broom closets. A hallway no one ever uses becomes their haven. Eames somehow finds a way to get the pair of them up on the roof one day, and from then on they often climb up in secret, eating lunch, alone together as always. They kiss quite a lot, really, as if to make up for all the time lost when they were not doing so.
Eames, to Arthur, on the event of one such kiss: “Darling, you taste of tuna fish sandwich.”
Arthur, to Eames: “Your accent really is going again.”
Eames pulls a handful of leaves off the tree that arches above them, a leafy, autumn-coloured canopy, and tosses it like confetti into Arthur’s face. “So I’ll binge on the BBC,” he says dismissively, pulling Arthur to him for another kiss. The sandwiches, the school below, everything that is not each other, is, for the moment, utterly forgotten.
_*_
How easy it is to fall into a false sense of security when the new routine is so much sweeter than the old. In science class, the professor tells them about Murphy’s Law. Eames hopes he is imagining how Arthur winced when he kissed him that morning. The turtlenecks and scarves have made a comeback, and you could blame that on colder weather, but Eames knows better. And all day, all that Eames catches from any of his teachers is that damn law. Anything that can go wrong will do so.
Eames wants to hold Arthur tighter than he ever has before when they’re together in his bedroom after school is over that day, but he can’t, because god, is he scared of hurting him more. In the guise of being sexy, he gets the scarf off and then he almost wishes he hadn’t, and Arthur covers it up again and says he fell down the stairs, you know how clumsy he can be, don’t you? But stairs don’t have hands, and there are handprints on Arthur’s neck.
“You have to tell someone,” Eames says, fighting those stupid tears away like he always does. “Soon. Or I will.”
Arthur shakes his head and ties the scarf so Eames can’t get it off again. “You can’t,” he whispers, and he looks so weak. There’s something dull and haunted in his eyes that Eames thought was gone after that summer. He looks odd like he did when they first met. “Please,” Arthur begs, “don’t ever tell anyone.” His eyes add what he can’t say, that he’ll hurt him worse if he finds out anyone else knows. Years of being crushed and pushed down have taught him that they only hit you until you cry, and after that you don’t ask questions. You just cry and hope he stops and ’Please’ becomes the only word in your vocabulary. But he still insists that no one did this to him. That he’s only clumsy. Such a contradiction.
“You’re worth so much more than this,” Eames murmurs, and it takes all the strength he has to honour Arthur’s stupid wishes and just tell him to be more careful where he’s walking, to pretend that Arthur really is just clumsy. The stairs have hands. And Eames desperately wishes he could shout sense into Arthur about this, but he knows from experience of the last time he lost his temper and tried that Arthur has a defence mechanism that sends him to the floor with his hands over his head, just asking, begging, please, saying I’m sorry; Eames doesn’t want to see Arthur look at him that way, his eyes haunted, the ’sorry’ still on his silent lips, ever again. So he takes a gentler angle.
Eames brushes a kiss, light, delicate, soft, on Arthur’s forehead, and he doesn’t say it, but he’s terrified to let Arthur go home, so he stalls and he stalls and he stalls, but at ten o’clock, Arthur has to leave. Arthur has to go, and Eames has to let him. After he walks out the door, Eames watches the street, late autumn leaves, brown from the cold, swirling in the icy breeze, long after Arthur disappears past his line of sight. A cold draft blows in through the window, and Eames looks away from the street and goes to shut it. Winter is on it’s way.
_*_
At school, the pair have an unexpected third member added to their party in the form of a freshman girl who Eames defends from a group of bullying upperclassmen trying to get at her sketchbook. She bends to pick up the torn sketches and Eames and Arthur kneel down to help her. On each page, a building has been erected with neat pencil lines and precision.
“These are really good,” Arthur says as they gather the scattered papers from the cold cement of the breezeway. His words form little clouds of mist in the frigid air.
“Thanks,” the girls says timidly, her dark brown hair falling in her face.
“Seriously,” Eames tells her, “you could be an architect or something.”
She smiles. “That’s the idea.” Then, as she takes the last of the pages from Arthur’s hands and tucks them back into her sketchbook and then into her black messenger bag, “You didn’t have to help me there.”
Arthur and Eames exchange a knowing glance. “Yes we did,” they say, in perfect unison. The girl smiles.
“I’m Ariadne,” she says.
“Like the spider goddess?” Arthur asks sceptically. Eames elbows him gently in the ribs.
“He means, ‘oh that’s a pretty name, I’m Arthur.’”
Arthur rolls his eyes. “Thank you for that, Eames.”
Ariadne gets the sense that she’s intruding on years of something, but she’s desperate for friends. High school without someone on your side is intolerable, so she just says, “So you’re Arthur, and Eames, then,” to clarify and when they nod and invite her along with them to their usual lunch spot, she agrees happily.
Time passes. Eames and Arthur are still very much Eames and Arthur, but now there is someone else, and that’s nice, because there’s something very different between having a friend who is also a lover, and having friends, as in more than one. By December, Ariadne is a full part of their lives, and Eames, because he is Eames, begins to worry that her drive to be accepted by them and approved of is not grounded in friendship or her previous isolation. He suspects she may be interested in a way that could ruin that friendship they’ve kindled, in Arthur, no less. Arthur laughs this off. Eames finds out why at Christmas.
Over the break, Arthur’s older brother and his fiancé, people Eames didn’t really even knew existed in any concrete manner (it’s not as if Arthur’s never mentioned family beyond his father, but he doesn’t tend to talk about his family much at all if he can help it), are in town. Arthur’s brother, Dom, looks nothing like him. Where Arthur is all skin and bones and dark hair and wide eyes, Dom is blonde and bigger and he squints when he talks about anything seriously. Eames sometimes wonders how he managed to pin down his fiancé, Mal, an enigmatic French girl he presumably met on his semester abroad, although they don’t talk much about it.
Ariadne, Arthur and Eames all spend a day with Dom and Mal downtown, where Arthur’s brother proves that he’s gotten away from the old man entirely and become rather affluent by buying all three of the teenagers trinkets and new clothes and expensive lunches.
Later, when Eames tells Arthur he thinks Ariadne might have gotten the wrong idea and developed a bit of a crush on him, Arthur laughs and tells Eames to take a peak in the girl’s sketchbook from time to time. She’s been drawing more curves than buildings lately.
Eames raises an eyebrow sceptically. “You’re telling me that you think Ariadne’s a lesbian,” he says incredulously.
“Well,” Arthur posits, “straight girls do not spend that much time drawing what they think certain French women might look like without their dresses on.”
Eames accepts it, and moves on. After Christmas, Dom and Mal leave again, back to college, or France, or something, Eames isn’t sure. Even with doses of happiness though, the holidays are cold. The stairs have not lost their hands.
_*_
One frozen morning mid-January, Arthur isn’t at the bus station when Eames arrives. Ariadne’s parents drive her in the morning, so they still have those early bus rides to themselves. Only now it’s just Eames. And he worries, and waits for Arthur through first period, and then second period, missing bus after bus and worrying. It’s that damn test that drives him onto his usual place at just the last moment, because Arthur will be so disappointed if he fails science this semester and his grade hinges on that damn test he’s got in thirty minutes. Eames gets on the bus.
The halls feel more dark and foreboding than usual without Arthur. He meets up with Ariadne on his way to class; she’s been texting him all morning, asking where he is, where Arthur is. “What took you so long?” she asks. He doesn’t answer. She knows not to ask about Arthur, so instead she just fakes a smile and tells him, “Mr. Yusuf is going to fail you for the semester if you don’t pass that damn test.” Eames nods. He knows this.
Eames is on the last few questions. Question number twenty-three is about Schrödinger’s Cat. Until proven to be either one way or the other, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. It’s a paradox, but to Eames in that moment, it’s a promise. He knows the correct answer, but he doesn’t write it. Instead, something strikes a chord in him, and the test gets turned in unfinished, and he’s written in question twenty-three’s answer as ‘The damn cat has to be alive. He has to.’. He runs out of class.
In the breezeway outside, Eames and Ariadne take turns calling Arthur. They hit his voicemail every time.
“Maybe he’s just got his phone turned on silent,” Ariadne says. “He could be fine.”
“And he could be laying in a ditch bleeding out,” Eames spits back. Ariadne looks somewhat hurt by his tone, and he’s instantly apologetic. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m just really worried. You know about his dad.”
Ariadne nods. “Let’s go for a walk and see if he calls back soon,” she suggests. Eames is shaking a little bit, half from anger, half from fear, probably a little bit from guilt. If only he hadn’t listened to Arthur and he’d told someone before now. “Shhh,” Ariadne says, making an awkward attempt to comfort the older boy, “it’s okay. He’ll be okay.” She smiles up at him, genuinely, and adds, “Anyone who’s got you to look after him will be. I mean, just look at me.” Eames lets himself smile, just a little. They go for a walk.
Eames almost has a heart attack when his phone rings a few minutes later. It’s Arthur. He answers before he has a chance to feel relieved that he’s at least still alive.
“Put him on speakerphone,” Ariadne says, and Eames does so they can both hear him.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is a little rough sounding, but damn it, he’s alive. Eames almost feels like throwing a fucking party.
Ariadne beats him to it. “Thank god,” she practically yells into the phone, tears burning at the corners of her dark eyes. Eames envies her her ability to let herself cry. “Damn it, Arthur,” she whispers. “We thought…” she trails off, unable to voice what they thought now that they know it hasn’t happened.
“You worry too much,” Arthur tells them, a false light edge in his voice. Eames recognizes that voice. It’s Arthur’s ‘everything is okay, so don’t you worry’ voice. So Eames does worry, because he only ever talks that way when something is wrong.
“Where are you?” Eames demands.
Arthur coughs. It’s a wet, sickening sound, and Eames is almost ready to drop the phone and leave Ariadne there and run all the way across town to Arthur’s house, because it’s an empty question. He knows where Arthur is. “I stayed home sick,” Arthur lies. “You really do worry too much.”
“Why do you have to lie to me?” Eames shouts, surprising even himself. But now he’s started, he can’t stop. “Why? Why do you defend him? He’s going to destroy you some day, if he hasn’t already!”
Arthur pretends he doesn’t know what Eames is talking about. “I’m sorry,” he says, that instinctual response that flares up whenever someone starts to raise their voice. Then another wet cough. It’s not a cough like he’s home sick. It’s a cough like he’s choking, like he’s drowning. Eames can almost hear the blood through the phone lines.
“Don’t apologize!” Eames yells into the receiver. “You don’t have any thing to apologize to me about!”
“Calm down, Eames,” Ariadne says softly, putting a delicate artist’s hand on his muscled arm in a vain effort to stop him from what they all know he is about to do. Eames’ last words to Arthur before he runs are that he won’t stop running until he finds him. It’s too late for Arthur to hear them anyway, though. The line goes dead as Ariadne tries to comfort Eames.
_*_
Despite having never actually been invited over to, or having been inside of, Arthur’s house, Eames has been near it many times, walking Arthur home, picking Arthur up. He can run there with his eyes closed. Eames is cursing every fiber of his stupid being as he runs, yelling obscenities at himself for every mistake he’s ever made: he blames himself. None of this would have been let to happen if he’d just told someone. Eames knew.
Near Arthur’s house, there is an alley; a little, dead-end gravel way studded with potholes and blackberry bushes and Eames knows that’s where he’ll find Arthur, or whatever’s left of him. Eames can see the alley now, and though he’s thoroughly out of breath and he feels like he wants to throw up for ten different reasons, there are thirty paces between him and Arthur’s front door, so he keeps running.
A familiar shoe is poking out from behind one of the blackberry bushes, one that seems to have been on the winning side of a swing-set versus blackberry battle over time. Eames absently wonders if the set, with it’s toddler-sized seats and chipping, primary coloured paint, used to be Arthur and Dom’s, a dying relic of better days.
And then Eames sees him. One leg is at an odd angle, and his mouth and nose are welling over with blood; his body is covered with bruises. He’s slumped against the fence in an unnatural position, dressed in nothing but his boxers and a blood-stained grey wife beater. He looks so cold, and so broken. His eyes are closed, so Eames assumes he isn’t conscious. Eames is no medical expert, but even he can tell, still from several feet away, that more than one of his ribs are cracked. Again. Eames covers the rest of the distance between them in less than a second, and kneels down at Arthur’s side. He takes of his jacket and lays it gently over Arthur, who is shivering ever so slightly.
He doesn’t ask questions. Not ’Are you going to be okay?’ or, ’Can you hear me?’, or ‘How could anyone do this to you?’. That he’ll never understand. I’m too late, Eames thinks. Murphy’s Law wins. Schrödinger’s Cat is dead. He takes Arthur’s hand in his gingerly, trying not to see the handprint that’s been pressed into his pale wrist. “I’m here,” he whispers. And somehow, somehow Arthur chooses that moment to flutter into consciousness.
“N-no,” he mutters, his eyes still not opening, barely moving his split lips to let the words out.
“I’m not leaving you here,” Eames insists. I’m not leaving you here to die.
“He’ll kill you,” Arthur says, so quiet Eames can barely hear him, and coughs again, and this time Eames is there next to him, so he can see the blood splutter up from his lungs and drip out the corners of his mouth, and even through that, Eames wants to kiss him, and he can’t remember having ever seen anything more beautiful than Arthur.
“I won’t let him,” Eames says, and now all the crying he’s been holding back for three years of Arthur’s suffering comes, and the tears are falling onto Arthur’s broken chest and face and mixing with the blood. Arthur doesn’t say anything. His grip is weaker than it was a moment ago. “Damn it, Arthur,” Eames begs, “don’t you dare die on me.”
Murphy’s Law. ‘Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.’ How can Eames forget in a moment like this that worse can come? But he does, and when the shadow looms behind them and Arthur still hasn’t responded more than a few ragged breaths, Eames is caught off his guard.
From there on out, his memory is a little hazy. He remembers standing up and facing Arthur’s father, a tall, large, grinning, ham-handed, disgusting man, Arthur’s exact opposite in every way, stinking of malt liquor and dried blood. He remembers realizing, maybe Arthur comes to and tells him, maybe Arthur’s father shouts it in the form of an insult, maybe the truth just hangs in the air, but he realizes that he knows. Arthur’s father knows about them. Them together. And he remembers throwing the first blow, and receiving one in return. Everything after that is a sea of red and black, anger and violence and nothing.
When Eames wakes up, he wakes up in a sea of white. Sterile, empty, blank, whiteness.
_*_
The first thing Eames sees when he wakes up is Ariadne, standing over him. He must be laying down, then. This makes sense. If he’s alive, then Ariadne will be there, even if Arthur isn’t. He doesn’t let his mind linger there very long. He doesn’t want to have survived if Arthur didn’t. What makes less sense is that he sees, from the corner of his eye, Dom sitting in a carpet-seated chair, looking anxious. A moment later, he gets audio in addition to the visual, and it all clicks into place. He’s in the hospital.
“He’s awake!” Ariadne is yelling to someone Eames can’t see, and she’s crying again, and Eames thinks there’s been a lot of crying lately, but this time, there’s happiness in the saltwater.
Eames reaches up and grips Ariadne’s arm and stares into her eyes in a way that unnerves the girl just the slightest bit, but it gets her attention, so Eames doesn’t care. “Where’s Arthur?” he demands, and to his surprise, Ariadne smiles, and points to the left.
Eames rolls onto his side, and even though it hurts, he stays and looks for what feels like hours, and when Arthur, in the cot next to his, only a yard or so away, opens his eyes, their gazes meet, and it’s all worth it. Eames remembers a song Arthur played for him once, by some dream pop group from New York. The melody runs through his head and he can scarcely remember the lyrics, but it doesn’t matter, because that’s enough, that and Arthur’s weak, bruised smile, to convince him that it is, for the first time, okay. Everything is going to be alright. Eames smiles, and it hurts a little, because at some point his jaw appears to have been broken, but when Arthur smiles back, Eames knows. It’s your choice to breathe.
Ariadne walks back into the room, Mal and Eames’ mother at her side. Eames thinks to himself that of all the moments in the world to get stuck in, this one wouldn’t be too bad. The moment will pass eventually, but for now it seems to go on forever, one single, static frame.
The heart monitors beat at a happy, even pace.
-*-
edit: just found this very apt image in and amongst my gifs:
And also because people were pointing it out and it really was pretty important while I was writing this, I've made a playlist of a few songs that influenced the fic. You might recognize a few lines if you haven't already. It's over here: http://www.playlist.com/playlist/20882166283
The fill is a fill for this prompt over at inception_kink . I hope you like it, OP. And other people. I kind of forgot a big part of the prompt when I was originally writing it and went over it today a lot trying to like, write in certain characters and situations that I totally blanked on having in there. Er. Yeah. Here it is, though! Maybe there will be an epilogue up tomorrow?
_*_
Cold, calculated and odd. No one knew what to write in his yearbooks. People talked about him, not to him; they couldn’t figure him out, so they just whispered and parted like the Red Sea when he passed and ignored him with a sort of awed confusion, pushing him to the sides of their buzzing brains: forgotten. Teenagers can be so very cruel.
Arthur? Oh yes, they know him. They know of him. He was that strange, skinny, dark-haired kid in their math class, right? Of course he was. Just leave it at that. People didn’t try getting too close. Maybe they were scared. Maybe teenagers really are somewhat less than human; humanity is learned, developed, not something you’re born with. And so they answer oh yes, they know of him. But it’s not like they, you know, know him on a personal level, or anything. That would be weird, and we can’t have that. So he’s odd and he’s left alone and some of the girls may pine after his sharp good looks and silent intelligence, his enigmatic distant aura, but no one ever cares to get close. Until Eames.
“You’ll make an outcast of yourself if you’re seen with me,” Arthur says quietly to the curious new boy one day early on in their high school careers. He recognizes him out of the corner of his eye: that new transfer student from somewhere in Britain. He doesn’t know precisely where. He wasn’t really paying attention, and he doesn’t keep up on gossip.
“Oh?” the Brit asks, grinning a lopsided, toothy grin. “And why’s that then?”
“They think I’m odd,” Arthur replies, not looking up fully from the book he is reading to acknowledge Eames. Maybe if he ignores him he’ll leave and not ruin himself by trying to be friends with Arthur, he thinks.
The other boy keeps on smiling, a smile that proves some stereotypes may still have basis in fact, teeth all mussed and in different directions: Arthur thinks it’s somewhat charming in its classlessness. “Well, are you?” he asks.
Arthur smiles in spite of himself. “Perhaps,” he admits.
“We’re all a bit odd, mate. S’what makes us human.”
“Tell that to the sheep,” Arthur retorts.
“Bollocks on the sheep.” Another infectious grin. “I’m Eames, by the way.”
“Arthur.”
The introduction, sealed with a handshake and an exchange of smiles, breaks down an unseen, unspoken barrier between them; Eames places himself at Arthur’s right hand, a place he will not vacate after that moment. He responds to the disdainful stares of a flock of on looking cheerleader-types with a rude hand gesture and turns away from them.
“So,” he begins, “Arthur, d’you reckon all American girls are as shit-stupid as that lot?”
Arthur grins as the flock disperses.
_*_
It’s a perfect partnership. Each morning, they meet at the bus station and Arthur goes over (read: does) Eames’ homework for him while they wait for the route to take them off to school. They ride in the back of the bus, three seats between them and everyone else, an impenetrable wall of companionship, and, naturally, oddness.
Each memorizes the other’s schedule, coordinating effortless to meet in the halls after each bell ring, escorting each other to and from their classes. And though they still eat lunch alone, they now do so together. If others occasionally think to get in with them, then Eames and Arthur don’t notice, or pretend not to, far too wrapped up in each other to give a shit about anyone else anymore.
Calculating and odd, maybe, but Eames knows that cold, Arthur is not. Behind his smiles, more frequent now than when they first met (Eames takes some credit for that), something darker always hides. Turtleneck sweatshirts and long sleeves and clumsiness. Always clumsiness. If Arthur were to be believed, then he would be the clumsiest boy in America. Eames doesn’t ask questions. Eames learns not to ask, just to watch, to care, to know. Eames always knows.
When the school bell rings and releases them, Pavlov’s dogs in flocks and flocks, endless, they go to Eames’ house most days. Eames’ house or their own separate ways. Never Arthur’s. Eames knows the address by heart though he’s never been inside and he knows what Arthur never tells him - Arthur’s house is not a home: it’s a prison.
_*_
On cold winter mornings when money is tight and whiskey is cheap, Arthur appears at the station early, already there, blowing on his hands to keep them warm, when Eames arrives. His cheeks are flushed, his expression unreadable. He doesn’t seem to have slept. He may look terrible, but to Eames he is always this - Arthur is glowing. Red, white, black, and blue.
“You know you can come over to my place when this happens,” Eames tells him. No questions. Just facts. Eames knows. “You know my mum wouldn’t mind having you about more.”
Arthur brushes him off. “Your accent is beginning to go,” he informs Eames.
“Lucky I still have my good looks,” Eames quips. But he hasn’t forgotten. Arthur pulls his scarf up, covering the last traces of what could only have been a hard evening at home. He’s so subtle in the way he hurts him that Eames feels like it’s never big enough to be able to save him. If Eames tells anyone, Arthur might end up even worse off. What’s the words of one stupid kid against a parent, or a teacher, or Arthur begging him to keep it a secret? Nothing.
Arthur picks up a handful of snow off the ground and crushes it into Eames’ hair. They wind up missing the bus that morning, but instead of facing the questions, Arthur suggests they cut school entirely and go to the movies.
“The cheap ones, of course,” Arthur clarifies.
Eames grins. “Thought you’d never ask. I knew someday my bad influence would rub off on you.”
When, a week later, Arthur is already sitting in Eames’ kitchen, frying himself an egg, when Eames rolls groggily out of bed and trudges downstairs, Eames is not surprised that it’s happened again: he’s only surprised that Arthur actually showed at his house. Eames waves sleepily. Arthur turns, and Eames sees the rest of his face. Arthur smiles weakly, a single, slight ripple in a sea of wrong. His eye is nearly swollen shut and Eames swears there is blood dried in the corner of his mouth.
“Jesus, Arthur,” Eames mutters, half running into the kitchen. He doesn’t ask ‘Are you okay?’ or ‘What happened?” because it isn’t necessary. Eames knows.
“I’m okay,” Arthur insists, sprinkling salt into the pan.
“No you aren’t.”
“You know me,” Arthur asserts. “I fell. Clumsy.”
“You’re not bloody okay,” Eames whispers, his voice cracking the tiniest bit with the weight of all the crying he’s never let himself do for Arthur because damn it, boys just don’t cry, and then his arms are there, holding Arthur’s slight frame against him like a child holding its favourite doll, and just as delicate. And Arthur just stands there, willing Eames not to worry, muttering about how he swears he walked into the door again.
“It’s not your business anyway,“ Arthur says. Eames walks out of the kitchen.
Arthur flips his egg in total silence.
_*_
Somewhere between sophomore and junior year, the line is blurred between friendship and something even more. Eames’ mother is out of town for some reason or another, and Arthur spends all glorious four of them with Eames and only Eames. It’s not as if anyone at his house notices he’s missing.
“The old man’s probably glad I’m gone,” Arthur tells Eames. Eames suggests they see what’s on On Demand, but they wind up watching something on the History channel about the French Revolution that Arthur picks out.
On the second night, Eames unearths and breaks into a box of cheap, pink wine, and they drink until they can taste nothing but rebellion that costs only eight ninety-five. Life is not the same after that. The nights are rife with sloppy alcohol kisses, sticky sweet on their lips and with singing and the sound of secrets melting into nothing. The days are sunny and bright and full of handholding that suddenly feels like daring the world to even try and touch them, because when you’re young and in love, you’re fucking immortal. All the barriers are gone. No holds are barred. Except one. Eames doesn’t ask any questions.
It is a glorious summer. Eames’ mother takes the three of them to the beach to stay in a cabin owned by one of Eames’ more obscure uncles for a week in August. They frolic like there is no world beyond the end of the shore, that the highway leads to nowhere, and that there is no school and no hate and no life as usual waiting for them Monday morning when they’re home again. Under the stars, cold ocean lapping at their toes, they kiss and touch and they die their little deaths until the sun comes up and they are freezing and naked and it doesn’t matter. The moon blushes and hides her face behind the clouds to give them privacy.
When they come back, Arthur’s father has a new girlfriend and a new job at the construction company where he works; Arthur spends most nights at Eames’ house anyway. But it seems like maybe, maybe from now on, everything is going to be alright.
Still, when the school year starts back up again, Eames goes out for the rugby team, just in case.
_*_
School days are more bearable punctuated by kisses stolen in bathrooms and broom closets. A hallway no one ever uses becomes their haven. Eames somehow finds a way to get the pair of them up on the roof one day, and from then on they often climb up in secret, eating lunch, alone together as always. They kiss quite a lot, really, as if to make up for all the time lost when they were not doing so.
Eames, to Arthur, on the event of one such kiss: “Darling, you taste of tuna fish sandwich.”
Arthur, to Eames: “Your accent really is going again.”
Eames pulls a handful of leaves off the tree that arches above them, a leafy, autumn-coloured canopy, and tosses it like confetti into Arthur’s face. “So I’ll binge on the BBC,” he says dismissively, pulling Arthur to him for another kiss. The sandwiches, the school below, everything that is not each other, is, for the moment, utterly forgotten.
_*_
How easy it is to fall into a false sense of security when the new routine is so much sweeter than the old. In science class, the professor tells them about Murphy’s Law. Eames hopes he is imagining how Arthur winced when he kissed him that morning. The turtlenecks and scarves have made a comeback, and you could blame that on colder weather, but Eames knows better. And all day, all that Eames catches from any of his teachers is that damn law. Anything that can go wrong will do so.
Eames wants to hold Arthur tighter than he ever has before when they’re together in his bedroom after school is over that day, but he can’t, because god, is he scared of hurting him more. In the guise of being sexy, he gets the scarf off and then he almost wishes he hadn’t, and Arthur covers it up again and says he fell down the stairs, you know how clumsy he can be, don’t you? But stairs don’t have hands, and there are handprints on Arthur’s neck.
“You have to tell someone,” Eames says, fighting those stupid tears away like he always does. “Soon. Or I will.”
Arthur shakes his head and ties the scarf so Eames can’t get it off again. “You can’t,” he whispers, and he looks so weak. There’s something dull and haunted in his eyes that Eames thought was gone after that summer. He looks odd like he did when they first met. “Please,” Arthur begs, “don’t ever tell anyone.” His eyes add what he can’t say, that he’ll hurt him worse if he finds out anyone else knows. Years of being crushed and pushed down have taught him that they only hit you until you cry, and after that you don’t ask questions. You just cry and hope he stops and ’Please’ becomes the only word in your vocabulary. But he still insists that no one did this to him. That he’s only clumsy. Such a contradiction.
“You’re worth so much more than this,” Eames murmurs, and it takes all the strength he has to honour Arthur’s stupid wishes and just tell him to be more careful where he’s walking, to pretend that Arthur really is just clumsy. The stairs have hands. And Eames desperately wishes he could shout sense into Arthur about this, but he knows from experience of the last time he lost his temper and tried that Arthur has a defence mechanism that sends him to the floor with his hands over his head, just asking, begging, please, saying I’m sorry; Eames doesn’t want to see Arthur look at him that way, his eyes haunted, the ’sorry’ still on his silent lips, ever again. So he takes a gentler angle.
Eames brushes a kiss, light, delicate, soft, on Arthur’s forehead, and he doesn’t say it, but he’s terrified to let Arthur go home, so he stalls and he stalls and he stalls, but at ten o’clock, Arthur has to leave. Arthur has to go, and Eames has to let him. After he walks out the door, Eames watches the street, late autumn leaves, brown from the cold, swirling in the icy breeze, long after Arthur disappears past his line of sight. A cold draft blows in through the window, and Eames looks away from the street and goes to shut it. Winter is on it’s way.
_*_
At school, the pair have an unexpected third member added to their party in the form of a freshman girl who Eames defends from a group of bullying upperclassmen trying to get at her sketchbook. She bends to pick up the torn sketches and Eames and Arthur kneel down to help her. On each page, a building has been erected with neat pencil lines and precision.
“These are really good,” Arthur says as they gather the scattered papers from the cold cement of the breezeway. His words form little clouds of mist in the frigid air.
“Thanks,” the girls says timidly, her dark brown hair falling in her face.
“Seriously,” Eames tells her, “you could be an architect or something.”
She smiles. “That’s the idea.” Then, as she takes the last of the pages from Arthur’s hands and tucks them back into her sketchbook and then into her black messenger bag, “You didn’t have to help me there.”
Arthur and Eames exchange a knowing glance. “Yes we did,” they say, in perfect unison. The girl smiles.
“I’m Ariadne,” she says.
“Like the spider goddess?” Arthur asks sceptically. Eames elbows him gently in the ribs.
“He means, ‘oh that’s a pretty name, I’m Arthur.’”
Arthur rolls his eyes. “Thank you for that, Eames.”
Ariadne gets the sense that she’s intruding on years of something, but she’s desperate for friends. High school without someone on your side is intolerable, so she just says, “So you’re Arthur, and Eames, then,” to clarify and when they nod and invite her along with them to their usual lunch spot, she agrees happily.
Time passes. Eames and Arthur are still very much Eames and Arthur, but now there is someone else, and that’s nice, because there’s something very different between having a friend who is also a lover, and having friends, as in more than one. By December, Ariadne is a full part of their lives, and Eames, because he is Eames, begins to worry that her drive to be accepted by them and approved of is not grounded in friendship or her previous isolation. He suspects she may be interested in a way that could ruin that friendship they’ve kindled, in Arthur, no less. Arthur laughs this off. Eames finds out why at Christmas.
Over the break, Arthur’s older brother and his fiancé, people Eames didn’t really even knew existed in any concrete manner (it’s not as if Arthur’s never mentioned family beyond his father, but he doesn’t tend to talk about his family much at all if he can help it), are in town. Arthur’s brother, Dom, looks nothing like him. Where Arthur is all skin and bones and dark hair and wide eyes, Dom is blonde and bigger and he squints when he talks about anything seriously. Eames sometimes wonders how he managed to pin down his fiancé, Mal, an enigmatic French girl he presumably met on his semester abroad, although they don’t talk much about it.
Ariadne, Arthur and Eames all spend a day with Dom and Mal downtown, where Arthur’s brother proves that he’s gotten away from the old man entirely and become rather affluent by buying all three of the teenagers trinkets and new clothes and expensive lunches.
Later, when Eames tells Arthur he thinks Ariadne might have gotten the wrong idea and developed a bit of a crush on him, Arthur laughs and tells Eames to take a peak in the girl’s sketchbook from time to time. She’s been drawing more curves than buildings lately.
Eames raises an eyebrow sceptically. “You’re telling me that you think Ariadne’s a lesbian,” he says incredulously.
“Well,” Arthur posits, “straight girls do not spend that much time drawing what they think certain French women might look like without their dresses on.”
Eames accepts it, and moves on. After Christmas, Dom and Mal leave again, back to college, or France, or something, Eames isn’t sure. Even with doses of happiness though, the holidays are cold. The stairs have not lost their hands.
_*_
One frozen morning mid-January, Arthur isn’t at the bus station when Eames arrives. Ariadne’s parents drive her in the morning, so they still have those early bus rides to themselves. Only now it’s just Eames. And he worries, and waits for Arthur through first period, and then second period, missing bus after bus and worrying. It’s that damn test that drives him onto his usual place at just the last moment, because Arthur will be so disappointed if he fails science this semester and his grade hinges on that damn test he’s got in thirty minutes. Eames gets on the bus.
The halls feel more dark and foreboding than usual without Arthur. He meets up with Ariadne on his way to class; she’s been texting him all morning, asking where he is, where Arthur is. “What took you so long?” she asks. He doesn’t answer. She knows not to ask about Arthur, so instead she just fakes a smile and tells him, “Mr. Yusuf is going to fail you for the semester if you don’t pass that damn test.” Eames nods. He knows this.
Eames is on the last few questions. Question number twenty-three is about Schrödinger’s Cat. Until proven to be either one way or the other, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. It’s a paradox, but to Eames in that moment, it’s a promise. He knows the correct answer, but he doesn’t write it. Instead, something strikes a chord in him, and the test gets turned in unfinished, and he’s written in question twenty-three’s answer as ‘The damn cat has to be alive. He has to.’. He runs out of class.
In the breezeway outside, Eames and Ariadne take turns calling Arthur. They hit his voicemail every time.
“Maybe he’s just got his phone turned on silent,” Ariadne says. “He could be fine.”
“And he could be laying in a ditch bleeding out,” Eames spits back. Ariadne looks somewhat hurt by his tone, and he’s instantly apologetic. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m just really worried. You know about his dad.”
Ariadne nods. “Let’s go for a walk and see if he calls back soon,” she suggests. Eames is shaking a little bit, half from anger, half from fear, probably a little bit from guilt. If only he hadn’t listened to Arthur and he’d told someone before now. “Shhh,” Ariadne says, making an awkward attempt to comfort the older boy, “it’s okay. He’ll be okay.” She smiles up at him, genuinely, and adds, “Anyone who’s got you to look after him will be. I mean, just look at me.” Eames lets himself smile, just a little. They go for a walk.
Eames almost has a heart attack when his phone rings a few minutes later. It’s Arthur. He answers before he has a chance to feel relieved that he’s at least still alive.
“Put him on speakerphone,” Ariadne says, and Eames does so they can both hear him.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is a little rough sounding, but damn it, he’s alive. Eames almost feels like throwing a fucking party.
Ariadne beats him to it. “Thank god,” she practically yells into the phone, tears burning at the corners of her dark eyes. Eames envies her her ability to let herself cry. “Damn it, Arthur,” she whispers. “We thought…” she trails off, unable to voice what they thought now that they know it hasn’t happened.
“You worry too much,” Arthur tells them, a false light edge in his voice. Eames recognizes that voice. It’s Arthur’s ‘everything is okay, so don’t you worry’ voice. So Eames does worry, because he only ever talks that way when something is wrong.
“Where are you?” Eames demands.
Arthur coughs. It’s a wet, sickening sound, and Eames is almost ready to drop the phone and leave Ariadne there and run all the way across town to Arthur’s house, because it’s an empty question. He knows where Arthur is. “I stayed home sick,” Arthur lies. “You really do worry too much.”
“Why do you have to lie to me?” Eames shouts, surprising even himself. But now he’s started, he can’t stop. “Why? Why do you defend him? He’s going to destroy you some day, if he hasn’t already!”
Arthur pretends he doesn’t know what Eames is talking about. “I’m sorry,” he says, that instinctual response that flares up whenever someone starts to raise their voice. Then another wet cough. It’s not a cough like he’s home sick. It’s a cough like he’s choking, like he’s drowning. Eames can almost hear the blood through the phone lines.
“Don’t apologize!” Eames yells into the receiver. “You don’t have any thing to apologize to me about!”
“Calm down, Eames,” Ariadne says softly, putting a delicate artist’s hand on his muscled arm in a vain effort to stop him from what they all know he is about to do. Eames’ last words to Arthur before he runs are that he won’t stop running until he finds him. It’s too late for Arthur to hear them anyway, though. The line goes dead as Ariadne tries to comfort Eames.
_*_
Despite having never actually been invited over to, or having been inside of, Arthur’s house, Eames has been near it many times, walking Arthur home, picking Arthur up. He can run there with his eyes closed. Eames is cursing every fiber of his stupid being as he runs, yelling obscenities at himself for every mistake he’s ever made: he blames himself. None of this would have been let to happen if he’d just told someone. Eames knew.
Near Arthur’s house, there is an alley; a little, dead-end gravel way studded with potholes and blackberry bushes and Eames knows that’s where he’ll find Arthur, or whatever’s left of him. Eames can see the alley now, and though he’s thoroughly out of breath and he feels like he wants to throw up for ten different reasons, there are thirty paces between him and Arthur’s front door, so he keeps running.
A familiar shoe is poking out from behind one of the blackberry bushes, one that seems to have been on the winning side of a swing-set versus blackberry battle over time. Eames absently wonders if the set, with it’s toddler-sized seats and chipping, primary coloured paint, used to be Arthur and Dom’s, a dying relic of better days.
And then Eames sees him. One leg is at an odd angle, and his mouth and nose are welling over with blood; his body is covered with bruises. He’s slumped against the fence in an unnatural position, dressed in nothing but his boxers and a blood-stained grey wife beater. He looks so cold, and so broken. His eyes are closed, so Eames assumes he isn’t conscious. Eames is no medical expert, but even he can tell, still from several feet away, that more than one of his ribs are cracked. Again. Eames covers the rest of the distance between them in less than a second, and kneels down at Arthur’s side. He takes of his jacket and lays it gently over Arthur, who is shivering ever so slightly.
He doesn’t ask questions. Not ’Are you going to be okay?’ or, ’Can you hear me?’, or ‘How could anyone do this to you?’. That he’ll never understand. I’m too late, Eames thinks. Murphy’s Law wins. Schrödinger’s Cat is dead. He takes Arthur’s hand in his gingerly, trying not to see the handprint that’s been pressed into his pale wrist. “I’m here,” he whispers. And somehow, somehow Arthur chooses that moment to flutter into consciousness.
“N-no,” he mutters, his eyes still not opening, barely moving his split lips to let the words out.
“I’m not leaving you here,” Eames insists. I’m not leaving you here to die.
“He’ll kill you,” Arthur says, so quiet Eames can barely hear him, and coughs again, and this time Eames is there next to him, so he can see the blood splutter up from his lungs and drip out the corners of his mouth, and even through that, Eames wants to kiss him, and he can’t remember having ever seen anything more beautiful than Arthur.
“I won’t let him,” Eames says, and now all the crying he’s been holding back for three years of Arthur’s suffering comes, and the tears are falling onto Arthur’s broken chest and face and mixing with the blood. Arthur doesn’t say anything. His grip is weaker than it was a moment ago. “Damn it, Arthur,” Eames begs, “don’t you dare die on me.”
Murphy’s Law. ‘Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.’ How can Eames forget in a moment like this that worse can come? But he does, and when the shadow looms behind them and Arthur still hasn’t responded more than a few ragged breaths, Eames is caught off his guard.
From there on out, his memory is a little hazy. He remembers standing up and facing Arthur’s father, a tall, large, grinning, ham-handed, disgusting man, Arthur’s exact opposite in every way, stinking of malt liquor and dried blood. He remembers realizing, maybe Arthur comes to and tells him, maybe Arthur’s father shouts it in the form of an insult, maybe the truth just hangs in the air, but he realizes that he knows. Arthur’s father knows about them. Them together. And he remembers throwing the first blow, and receiving one in return. Everything after that is a sea of red and black, anger and violence and nothing.
When Eames wakes up, he wakes up in a sea of white. Sterile, empty, blank, whiteness.
_*_
The first thing Eames sees when he wakes up is Ariadne, standing over him. He must be laying down, then. This makes sense. If he’s alive, then Ariadne will be there, even if Arthur isn’t. He doesn’t let his mind linger there very long. He doesn’t want to have survived if Arthur didn’t. What makes less sense is that he sees, from the corner of his eye, Dom sitting in a carpet-seated chair, looking anxious. A moment later, he gets audio in addition to the visual, and it all clicks into place. He’s in the hospital.
“He’s awake!” Ariadne is yelling to someone Eames can’t see, and she’s crying again, and Eames thinks there’s been a lot of crying lately, but this time, there’s happiness in the saltwater.
Eames reaches up and grips Ariadne’s arm and stares into her eyes in a way that unnerves the girl just the slightest bit, but it gets her attention, so Eames doesn’t care. “Where’s Arthur?” he demands, and to his surprise, Ariadne smiles, and points to the left.
Eames rolls onto his side, and even though it hurts, he stays and looks for what feels like hours, and when Arthur, in the cot next to his, only a yard or so away, opens his eyes, their gazes meet, and it’s all worth it. Eames remembers a song Arthur played for him once, by some dream pop group from New York. The melody runs through his head and he can scarcely remember the lyrics, but it doesn’t matter, because that’s enough, that and Arthur’s weak, bruised smile, to convince him that it is, for the first time, okay. Everything is going to be alright. Eames smiles, and it hurts a little, because at some point his jaw appears to have been broken, but when Arthur smiles back, Eames knows. It’s your choice to breathe.
Ariadne walks back into the room, Mal and Eames’ mother at her side. Eames thinks to himself that of all the moments in the world to get stuck in, this one wouldn’t be too bad. The moment will pass eventually, but for now it seems to go on forever, one single, static frame.
The heart monitors beat at a happy, even pace.
-*-
edit: just found this very apt image in and amongst my gifs:
And also because people were pointing it out and it really was pretty important while I was writing this, I've made a playlist of a few songs that influenced the fic. You might recognize a few lines if you haven't already. It's over here: http://www.playlist.com/playlist/20882166283