To see is to guess (1/1)
Title: To see is to guess
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A touch is enough to make Arthur see the tragedy in other people's life.
Note: in order to get anything at all posted this month, have something old! XD This is the fic I wrote for jillrocca at the dream exchange.
Arthur stopped shaking hands with people at the age of twelve.
At twenty-eight, people still think it very rude of him to extend his hand only to withdraw the offer the second they are ready to take it.
His mother thought him very rude and all the people he meets still do, but he slowly learned to deal with it, with people thinking him cold and rude, day after day, person after person, stranger after stranger.
“Arthur doesn't like to touch people” slowly became common knowledge, a fact, and Arthur has learned to act according to that expectation.
It's always “Arthur doesn't like to touch people” and never “Arthur has a secret that is rendering him unable to touch people.”
Most people don't think that far.
*
It was fun when he was younger, fun and less serious than it is now.
His mother would ruffle his hair and four-year old Arthur would know what type of dessert he could look forward to in the evening, she would hug him and he would know exactly where she was going to hide the Christmas presents in two months.
In primary school, he would brush past teachers in the hallway and know just enough of the correct answers for his maths quiz the week after, and he made the right friends because he could tell exactly who was going to say mean things about him in six months time.
It seemed like a gift back then, a nudge from some benevolent deity, harmless and enjoyable, but the older Arthur turned, the more his harmless gift seemed to turn into a curse.
He would pat the neighbour's dog's head only to see it being run over by a car, every second of unbearable pain the poor creature would endure shared between them in seconds.
Instead of seeing desserts, all he saw when his mother hugged him now was the day, seventh of April it would say on the newspaper carelessly tossed onto the kitchen table, that she would pack up her bags and leave, saying “I'm sorry Arthur, but Mum and Dad don't get along anymore”, and every touch burdened him with even more misfortune, more sadness that was not his own, never his own.
Arthur thought about ways to prevent all those things from happening.
If any of what they said in the movies was right, then the future was never fixed, and always open to interpretation, but Arthur had to admit that during the seconds that a brief touch usually lasted, not much information could be gained, never enough to make him a hero.
At sixteen he briefly wondered if it was his touch that brought people all that sadness, if it was his curse that killed and destroyed.
Maybe there was just too much sadness in the world.
Arthur stopped shaking hands with people at the age of twelve.
His mother thought him very rude, but five years later, he was none of her concern anymore.
*
Cobb, Arthur knows, is okay with it.
It has always been very hard to surprise Cobb with anything, and that is probably the reason he got as far as he did in the business they are in.
Because Arthur has never touched him, there are a lot of things Arthur doesn't know about him, but he feels as if they are things he probably wouldn't want to know.
Still, as mysterious as this man is, practical and quiet one minute and deadly charming the next, he is the first person Arthur wants to trust, the first person he wants to tell about this thing that doesn't really have a name, and on days when he is feeling very optimistic he even thinks that if he touched Dom, he might see something positive.
When he meets Mal for the first time, he changes his mind as soon as her lips touch his cheek and he sees her, bright and clear, dangling her feet over a hotel windowsill, dropping a shoe into the black nothingness beneath her.
Thinking back, Arthur should have known Eames would be different.
He has always tried to be different, because he likes it best that way, and so instead of getting the hint when Arthur stops shy of shaking his hand, he quickly grasps and squeezes firmly.
Arthur braces himself for the worst, but instead all he can see is himself smiling at Eames in a moment in time he can't even pinpoint.
Arthur hasn't smiled, really truly smiled at someone in so long that this vision terrifies him more than any other.
Eames, Arthur realises, is the only person whose handshake does not tell a story of loss and death.
Maybe because he has got nothing to lose anymore.
Maybe because he is invincible.
*
Shards of glass rain onto his back when the window above Arthur shatters and he ducks his head just in time.
He hates missions that go like this.
He is in a restaurant that looks as if every guest left it hastily just moments ago, there is still food on the tables, a few candles are still lit, but there is no one there, and the last rain of bullets has destroyed a fair bit of the interior by now.
Arthur wills himself to think - it's Cobb's design, he has seen the blueprints, and if he really tries, he should find a way out of there.
He decides to stand up and run, but the moment he becomes visible above the windowsill a trigger is pulled and a bullet hits his shoulder a split-second later.
That is when Eames bursts through the door.
He finds Arthur slumped against the wall, clutching his arm, but he still flinches when Eames touches the wound just to examine it.
He sees blood on Eames' hands, and for a moment it's like seeing double, vision and reality mingling, but he now knows what Eames is afraid of, and it's the first thing they have in common.
*
Arthur is a point man because he is exactly what he appears to be, complicated and troubled.
Eames is a forger because even though there is much more to him, he can make you think he is the most simple-minded person on earth.
Maybe it's that skill that makes Arthur want to get to know him better.
The skill of a gambler.
“Being able to tell reality and dreams apart is a very important skill,” is what Mal tells them, and
Arthur wonders when the last time was he managed to do so, he doesn't dream on his own
anymore, the visions won't let him.
Tired of seeing things he cannot change, Arthur has often wondered whether living in a dream wouldn't be preferable to the harshness of reality.
“I know what you're thinking,” Eames tells him that day, “But dreams aren't that much nicer, either.”
*
It's one of those nights Arthur refuses to sleep when Eames finds him at their warehouse in Washington, drawing charts and verifying data on their mark.
His hand touches Arthur's shoulder, and Arthur who didn't hear him come in gasps when a vision of Eames kissing blood-stained lips flickers past.
“You need to relax, darling,” Eames says, and it is the first time he has called him that, the first of many more to come.
Arthur doesn't like it, it doesn't fit with what he has just seen, and he doesn't like being told to relax in general, and he tells Eames as much.
“I hardly know you,” he says, even though sometimes, when he thinks back to the visions he has had, he feels like he does.
When Eames suggests going for a drink to change that, Arthur finds himself saying yes without so much as a second thought.
The idea of drinking enough to be able to sleep sounds appealing, and he ends up with Eames talking to him in that low, soothing voice of his that he normally uses to get a mark to trust him, in a dim and dirty bar that he would normally never even notice.
“I have only talked about myself for two hours,” Eames says at some point, raising his eyebrows at the number of empty bottles in front of Arthur.
Arthur's eyes are fixed on a spot somewhere on Eames' chest, adorned by an ill-fitting shirt with a hideous pattern, and in the hazy fog that is his mind he hopes that Eames won't ask him what it was he talked about, or make it Arthur's turn to talk.
“I always look at you, you know,” Eames says slowly, his eyes trained on Arthur, unblinking.
“I am good at that. Looking at people and telling what they are thinking, what they like and what not. With you, there's nothing.”
“Maybe because I don't want to be read,” Arthur slurs, growing tired.
“You have a secret,” Eames says, and with the way he says it, it doesn't even sound like an odd thing to say.
“Listen to me,” he says, and when Arthur doesn't react, he grabs his hand.
The other man can stifle his gasp this time when the images invade his head, he tries to squirm away but Eames doesn't let go - there is the sun filtering through the bedroom window of an apartment in Paris, Eames tangled up in the sheet that Arthur bought at a luxury department store in Tokyo, and there is Eames, telling him not to go, this fingernails digging into Arthur's biceps, there is a funeral, Eames dressed impeccably, his hands in his pockets, unable to look at the coffin, and there is an explosion, and “dream a little bigger, darling.”
Dream a little bigger.
He wouldn't be able to even if he tried.
Eames lets go.
“I am going to be the person to uncover that secret,” he says, and he is more serious than Arthur has ever seen him.
*
Two years later, Arthur still hasn't told him.
It is the twenty-fourth of November when Arthur gets shot on the street, out in the open, in a dream by their mark, and really, he should have known better than to let Cobb mess around with an ex-marine, and a very important one at that, but Cobb doesn't know his boundaries these days, not ever since he's started experimenting in dreams with Mal.
Their kids call Arthur 'Uncle Arthur' now, what with the large number of times he has agreed to watch them whenever their parents are busy sleeping, and they come back like drug addicts, high on the wonders and possibilities they have encountered.
Eames tells them to stop, to be reasonable, but as Eames put it, no one ever listens to the voice of reason because reason is boring.
Eames is with him when he gets shot, because he has been around for enough missions to know when Arthur doesn't concentrate and is likely to fuck up, and even though he isn't exactly helping, Arthur doesn't brush him off because sometimes it's the thought that counts.
Arthur hates the twenty-fourth of November.
It's the day Mal will die.
Eames declares the mission for failed and shoots the mark, then looks down on Arthur, bleeding onto the pavement.
“Shall I...?” he asks, and inclines his head towards his gun, but Arthur shakes his head.
The moments he dies are the ones he feels most alive.
He coughs up blood and his fingernails claw at the pavement, but he wants this, needs this more than anything in order to know that it's just a dream.
“I wish you would tell me,” Eames says and kneels down to him.
Arthur can feel his consciousness slowly fraying around the edges.
The world is growing blurry.
“Well,” Eames says,and bends down to kiss his bloody lips.
*
The funeral takes place a year later.
Eames is there, suit and tie new but his leather shoes muddy, and he can't look anywhere, least of all Mal's coffin.
Arthur had no idea he was so attached to Mal even though Eames has been with them for almost four years, and he wonders if it had been easier on him if Arthur had told him it would happen.
Eames chokes a few words that sound like “I can't” and “I won't”, never raising his eyes, biting back the sobs threatening to escape and Arthur, unaccustomed to such a sight, has to avert his eyes.
*
Eames leaves after that.
Says he needs a break.
He comes to say goodbye to Cobb and Arthur, and while Arthur doesn't believe Eames to be the type to take a break, he sympathises and if he is honest, sad to see him go.
“Next time we meet, I'm going to tell you,” he says, and when they shake hands, Arthur sees a two-storey house in Mombasa.
It takes him five months to gather his courage enough to go there.
*
Eames' house doesn't have a doorbell, so Arthur knocks, uncertain if he will be heard over the masses of people pushing past him on the busy main road, or the motorbikes and cars that simply zigzag through the crowds.
He waits for a while, only to find that the door isn't locked, and decides to go in.
The house is made of clay, unpainted walls, no real floor to speak of, and Arthur, used to something a little more luxurious, thinks that you really have to love this place to live here, but it's huge and it somehow retains Eames' taste and warmth.
He starts when he hears a door slam shut and Eames suddenly stands in front of him.
By the look on his face he had no idea someone knocked on his door just now, and his eyes widen at the sight of Arthur.
“How did you...?” he breathes, but Arthur suddenly feel ridiculous, and decides to give in to the impulse to just walk away and pretend he hasn't come all the way from Paris just to see Eames.
“Arthur darling,” Eames says, his voice dangerous, “I haven't told anyone about this place. This is Mombasa, it's not like they keep extensive records about their tenants here. Care to explain how you found me?”
Arthur turns to go.
“It was a bad idea to come here,” he mumbles, but Eames grabs him by the biceps.”
“Don't go,” he whispers, “You said you'd tell me.”
Arthur sees Fischer, and he sees Eames in a warehouse, kicking the legs of his chair. It will be a secret, until that job, whatever job it will be, is over, until they are safe, but he wants to tell him now, he wants to start trusting to stop wasting time.
“There was a friend in your past you couldn't rescue,” he says, “You still remember his blood on your hands, and while you are not afraid of your own death, you are afraid that someone close to you might die. Maybe that's why you never told me that you love me, but you will tell me on a evening in June, on the veranda of this house that I actually haven't seen yet, it will be entirely too humid and the car exhausts will make me cough and almost miss the moment, but you will tell me, and come to Paris with me because I know I won't like it here.
You like my eyes and my shoulders and you always thought you would be the one to make me smile one day, telling me a lewd joke and calling me a pet name, but I can tell you right now that on that day, only a few months from now, I will only smile because you have tried so hard, and not because the joke is funny.”
He exhales loudly.
“When people touch me I... see things. Something like snippets of the future they are afraid of.
That future will come true. When you touched me, you were the first person that has touched me since I was a child, that didn't seem afraid of a bad future, not until I saw your bloody hands.
That future will still come true. You will be unable to save someone, but maybe it will happen in a dream and won't... matter.”
Arthur smiles weakly.
“Yeah,” Eames says slowly, “I am afraid of your death, darling. Constantly. Not that it ever kept you from getting yourself killed. So...”
He pauses.
“You can see the future, then.”
Arthur loses all his courage.
It sounds ridiculous.
Everything between them has been said, and so they stand in the middle of Eames' living room, Eames still not letting go, until the silence grows uncomfortable.
“Do you love me?” Eames asks Arthur quietly, and Arthur steps closer to embrace him and press a small kiss to his lips, simply because he hates the lost and uncertain look Eames is giving him.
“I will grow to,” he says, and from what the future has told him, he knows he is right.
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A touch is enough to make Arthur see the tragedy in other people's life.
Note: in order to get anything at all posted this month, have something old! XD This is the fic I wrote for jillrocca at the dream exchange.
Arthur stopped shaking hands with people at the age of twelve.
At twenty-eight, people still think it very rude of him to extend his hand only to withdraw the offer the second they are ready to take it.
His mother thought him very rude and all the people he meets still do, but he slowly learned to deal with it, with people thinking him cold and rude, day after day, person after person, stranger after stranger.
“Arthur doesn't like to touch people” slowly became common knowledge, a fact, and Arthur has learned to act according to that expectation.
It's always “Arthur doesn't like to touch people” and never “Arthur has a secret that is rendering him unable to touch people.”
Most people don't think that far.
*
It was fun when he was younger, fun and less serious than it is now.
His mother would ruffle his hair and four-year old Arthur would know what type of dessert he could look forward to in the evening, she would hug him and he would know exactly where she was going to hide the Christmas presents in two months.
In primary school, he would brush past teachers in the hallway and know just enough of the correct answers for his maths quiz the week after, and he made the right friends because he could tell exactly who was going to say mean things about him in six months time.
It seemed like a gift back then, a nudge from some benevolent deity, harmless and enjoyable, but the older Arthur turned, the more his harmless gift seemed to turn into a curse.
He would pat the neighbour's dog's head only to see it being run over by a car, every second of unbearable pain the poor creature would endure shared between them in seconds.
Instead of seeing desserts, all he saw when his mother hugged him now was the day, seventh of April it would say on the newspaper carelessly tossed onto the kitchen table, that she would pack up her bags and leave, saying “I'm sorry Arthur, but Mum and Dad don't get along anymore”, and every touch burdened him with even more misfortune, more sadness that was not his own, never his own.
Arthur thought about ways to prevent all those things from happening.
If any of what they said in the movies was right, then the future was never fixed, and always open to interpretation, but Arthur had to admit that during the seconds that a brief touch usually lasted, not much information could be gained, never enough to make him a hero.
At sixteen he briefly wondered if it was his touch that brought people all that sadness, if it was his curse that killed and destroyed.
Maybe there was just too much sadness in the world.
Arthur stopped shaking hands with people at the age of twelve.
His mother thought him very rude, but five years later, he was none of her concern anymore.
*
Cobb, Arthur knows, is okay with it.
It has always been very hard to surprise Cobb with anything, and that is probably the reason he got as far as he did in the business they are in.
Because Arthur has never touched him, there are a lot of things Arthur doesn't know about him, but he feels as if they are things he probably wouldn't want to know.
Still, as mysterious as this man is, practical and quiet one minute and deadly charming the next, he is the first person Arthur wants to trust, the first person he wants to tell about this thing that doesn't really have a name, and on days when he is feeling very optimistic he even thinks that if he touched Dom, he might see something positive.
When he meets Mal for the first time, he changes his mind as soon as her lips touch his cheek and he sees her, bright and clear, dangling her feet over a hotel windowsill, dropping a shoe into the black nothingness beneath her.
Thinking back, Arthur should have known Eames would be different.
He has always tried to be different, because he likes it best that way, and so instead of getting the hint when Arthur stops shy of shaking his hand, he quickly grasps and squeezes firmly.
Arthur braces himself for the worst, but instead all he can see is himself smiling at Eames in a moment in time he can't even pinpoint.
Arthur hasn't smiled, really truly smiled at someone in so long that this vision terrifies him more than any other.
Eames, Arthur realises, is the only person whose handshake does not tell a story of loss and death.
Maybe because he has got nothing to lose anymore.
Maybe because he is invincible.
*
Shards of glass rain onto his back when the window above Arthur shatters and he ducks his head just in time.
He hates missions that go like this.
He is in a restaurant that looks as if every guest left it hastily just moments ago, there is still food on the tables, a few candles are still lit, but there is no one there, and the last rain of bullets has destroyed a fair bit of the interior by now.
Arthur wills himself to think - it's Cobb's design, he has seen the blueprints, and if he really tries, he should find a way out of there.
He decides to stand up and run, but the moment he becomes visible above the windowsill a trigger is pulled and a bullet hits his shoulder a split-second later.
That is when Eames bursts through the door.
He finds Arthur slumped against the wall, clutching his arm, but he still flinches when Eames touches the wound just to examine it.
He sees blood on Eames' hands, and for a moment it's like seeing double, vision and reality mingling, but he now knows what Eames is afraid of, and it's the first thing they have in common.
*
Arthur is a point man because he is exactly what he appears to be, complicated and troubled.
Eames is a forger because even though there is much more to him, he can make you think he is the most simple-minded person on earth.
Maybe it's that skill that makes Arthur want to get to know him better.
The skill of a gambler.
“Being able to tell reality and dreams apart is a very important skill,” is what Mal tells them, and
Arthur wonders when the last time was he managed to do so, he doesn't dream on his own
anymore, the visions won't let him.
Tired of seeing things he cannot change, Arthur has often wondered whether living in a dream wouldn't be preferable to the harshness of reality.
“I know what you're thinking,” Eames tells him that day, “But dreams aren't that much nicer, either.”
*
It's one of those nights Arthur refuses to sleep when Eames finds him at their warehouse in Washington, drawing charts and verifying data on their mark.
His hand touches Arthur's shoulder, and Arthur who didn't hear him come in gasps when a vision of Eames kissing blood-stained lips flickers past.
“You need to relax, darling,” Eames says, and it is the first time he has called him that, the first of many more to come.
Arthur doesn't like it, it doesn't fit with what he has just seen, and he doesn't like being told to relax in general, and he tells Eames as much.
“I hardly know you,” he says, even though sometimes, when he thinks back to the visions he has had, he feels like he does.
When Eames suggests going for a drink to change that, Arthur finds himself saying yes without so much as a second thought.
The idea of drinking enough to be able to sleep sounds appealing, and he ends up with Eames talking to him in that low, soothing voice of his that he normally uses to get a mark to trust him, in a dim and dirty bar that he would normally never even notice.
“I have only talked about myself for two hours,” Eames says at some point, raising his eyebrows at the number of empty bottles in front of Arthur.
Arthur's eyes are fixed on a spot somewhere on Eames' chest, adorned by an ill-fitting shirt with a hideous pattern, and in the hazy fog that is his mind he hopes that Eames won't ask him what it was he talked about, or make it Arthur's turn to talk.
“I always look at you, you know,” Eames says slowly, his eyes trained on Arthur, unblinking.
“I am good at that. Looking at people and telling what they are thinking, what they like and what not. With you, there's nothing.”
“Maybe because I don't want to be read,” Arthur slurs, growing tired.
“You have a secret,” Eames says, and with the way he says it, it doesn't even sound like an odd thing to say.
“Listen to me,” he says, and when Arthur doesn't react, he grabs his hand.
The other man can stifle his gasp this time when the images invade his head, he tries to squirm away but Eames doesn't let go - there is the sun filtering through the bedroom window of an apartment in Paris, Eames tangled up in the sheet that Arthur bought at a luxury department store in Tokyo, and there is Eames, telling him not to go, this fingernails digging into Arthur's biceps, there is a funeral, Eames dressed impeccably, his hands in his pockets, unable to look at the coffin, and there is an explosion, and “dream a little bigger, darling.”
Dream a little bigger.
He wouldn't be able to even if he tried.
Eames lets go.
“I am going to be the person to uncover that secret,” he says, and he is more serious than Arthur has ever seen him.
*
Two years later, Arthur still hasn't told him.
It is the twenty-fourth of November when Arthur gets shot on the street, out in the open, in a dream by their mark, and really, he should have known better than to let Cobb mess around with an ex-marine, and a very important one at that, but Cobb doesn't know his boundaries these days, not ever since he's started experimenting in dreams with Mal.
Their kids call Arthur 'Uncle Arthur' now, what with the large number of times he has agreed to watch them whenever their parents are busy sleeping, and they come back like drug addicts, high on the wonders and possibilities they have encountered.
Eames tells them to stop, to be reasonable, but as Eames put it, no one ever listens to the voice of reason because reason is boring.
Eames is with him when he gets shot, because he has been around for enough missions to know when Arthur doesn't concentrate and is likely to fuck up, and even though he isn't exactly helping, Arthur doesn't brush him off because sometimes it's the thought that counts.
Arthur hates the twenty-fourth of November.
It's the day Mal will die.
Eames declares the mission for failed and shoots the mark, then looks down on Arthur, bleeding onto the pavement.
“Shall I...?” he asks, and inclines his head towards his gun, but Arthur shakes his head.
The moments he dies are the ones he feels most alive.
He coughs up blood and his fingernails claw at the pavement, but he wants this, needs this more than anything in order to know that it's just a dream.
“I wish you would tell me,” Eames says and kneels down to him.
Arthur can feel his consciousness slowly fraying around the edges.
The world is growing blurry.
“Well,” Eames says,and bends down to kiss his bloody lips.
*
The funeral takes place a year later.
Eames is there, suit and tie new but his leather shoes muddy, and he can't look anywhere, least of all Mal's coffin.
Arthur had no idea he was so attached to Mal even though Eames has been with them for almost four years, and he wonders if it had been easier on him if Arthur had told him it would happen.
Eames chokes a few words that sound like “I can't” and “I won't”, never raising his eyes, biting back the sobs threatening to escape and Arthur, unaccustomed to such a sight, has to avert his eyes.
*
Eames leaves after that.
Says he needs a break.
He comes to say goodbye to Cobb and Arthur, and while Arthur doesn't believe Eames to be the type to take a break, he sympathises and if he is honest, sad to see him go.
“Next time we meet, I'm going to tell you,” he says, and when they shake hands, Arthur sees a two-storey house in Mombasa.
It takes him five months to gather his courage enough to go there.
*
Eames' house doesn't have a doorbell, so Arthur knocks, uncertain if he will be heard over the masses of people pushing past him on the busy main road, or the motorbikes and cars that simply zigzag through the crowds.
He waits for a while, only to find that the door isn't locked, and decides to go in.
The house is made of clay, unpainted walls, no real floor to speak of, and Arthur, used to something a little more luxurious, thinks that you really have to love this place to live here, but it's huge and it somehow retains Eames' taste and warmth.
He starts when he hears a door slam shut and Eames suddenly stands in front of him.
By the look on his face he had no idea someone knocked on his door just now, and his eyes widen at the sight of Arthur.
“How did you...?” he breathes, but Arthur suddenly feel ridiculous, and decides to give in to the impulse to just walk away and pretend he hasn't come all the way from Paris just to see Eames.
“Arthur darling,” Eames says, his voice dangerous, “I haven't told anyone about this place. This is Mombasa, it's not like they keep extensive records about their tenants here. Care to explain how you found me?”
Arthur turns to go.
“It was a bad idea to come here,” he mumbles, but Eames grabs him by the biceps.”
“Don't go,” he whispers, “You said you'd tell me.”
Arthur sees Fischer, and he sees Eames in a warehouse, kicking the legs of his chair. It will be a secret, until that job, whatever job it will be, is over, until they are safe, but he wants to tell him now, he wants to start trusting to stop wasting time.
“There was a friend in your past you couldn't rescue,” he says, “You still remember his blood on your hands, and while you are not afraid of your own death, you are afraid that someone close to you might die. Maybe that's why you never told me that you love me, but you will tell me on a evening in June, on the veranda of this house that I actually haven't seen yet, it will be entirely too humid and the car exhausts will make me cough and almost miss the moment, but you will tell me, and come to Paris with me because I know I won't like it here.
You like my eyes and my shoulders and you always thought you would be the one to make me smile one day, telling me a lewd joke and calling me a pet name, but I can tell you right now that on that day, only a few months from now, I will only smile because you have tried so hard, and not because the joke is funny.”
He exhales loudly.
“When people touch me I... see things. Something like snippets of the future they are afraid of.
That future will come true. When you touched me, you were the first person that has touched me since I was a child, that didn't seem afraid of a bad future, not until I saw your bloody hands.
That future will still come true. You will be unable to save someone, but maybe it will happen in a dream and won't... matter.”
Arthur smiles weakly.
“Yeah,” Eames says slowly, “I am afraid of your death, darling. Constantly. Not that it ever kept you from getting yourself killed. So...”
He pauses.
“You can see the future, then.”
Arthur loses all his courage.
It sounds ridiculous.
Everything between them has been said, and so they stand in the middle of Eames' living room, Eames still not letting go, until the silence grows uncomfortable.
“Do you love me?” Eames asks Arthur quietly, and Arthur steps closer to embrace him and press a small kiss to his lips, simply because he hates the lost and uncertain look Eames is giving him.
“I will grow to,” he says, and from what the future has told him, he knows he is right.