(05) → the brightest firefly in my jar (2/3)
title: the brightest firefly in my jar
pairing: arthur/eames
summary: the lookout au: before he was arthur, he was chris pratt. he is in paris with a beautiful french woman who knows his name and loves him and all he thinks of is the way eames looked at him.
Arthur forgets to put on socks. It’s a simple mistake - anyone can do it - but Mal asks him purposefully how he reminded himself of these things before. “Labels,” he says, and she spends the entire day printing them out, thick and blue and white-lettered, and Arthur feels better.
He makes his own labels, sticks paper to the back so he can keep them in his bedside table drawer, and reminds himself of the home he has been given here.
Mal he prints out, and then, lovely.
After that, he prints out fireflies.
*
Eames goes away for a little while. Mal insists that he’s stayed longer than he usually does and is far from subtle in her implications that it’s because of Arthur. “He does not understand your injury,” she explains, fingers ghosting over his temple. “He is fascinated by what happened to you and how you dream. Your buildings are structured magnificently. And I think he will fall in love with you, but that will come in time,” she laughs.
They are lying in bed together. Mal’s belly is growing and Dom insists she stay well-rested, but she always brings Arthur to bed with her and they never rest anyway. Not at first, that is. Mal loves to talk to him about him. She loves to tell him that he did well, that he is fascinating, beautiful, soft, always soft, and Arthur can only stare, because he is in love with Mal and she doesn’t even know it.
But he doesn’t love her like that. Never like that. He used to, he thinks, because he was younger then than he is now, and he was a boy and in love with a woman he didn’t know, bubblegum lips.
Mal is his best friend, he thinks. Mal is what Kelly was to him before the crash.
He thinks of her, very briefly, and he still sees Mal’s lips moving but he isn’t listening because Kelly. They all died and it’s my fault and he reaches up to his face and covers his mouth, holds back a sob.
Sometimes he just cries. There is always a reason.
Mal leans in and tries to hold him, but Arthur turns on his side, can’t bear to look at her because he’ll kill her too, one day. She slides her arm over his waist, fingertips brushing over his chest, and her belly presses against his back, head against his neck and she whispers sweet French to his ear, places a kiss along his spine and Arthur falls asleep still crying.
*
Eames comes back after Philippa is born.
He sits with Arthur in the living room. Philippa is four months old and pink and beautiful, and Mal lets him hold her so long as he’s careful. But right now, he is sitting with Eames on the couch, and that is all.
“Has it improved for you?” Eames asks. “The dreaming?”
“I guess.”
It has and it hasn’t.
Arthur has learned to compose himself better. He doesn’t cry when he wakes up, but sometimes he cries for days afterwards and doesn’t really know why.
Mostly, he writes things down, does research, because when he needs to put things in terms he can understand, he tends to record more in his notebooks, and Dom always refers back to those details appreciatively.
In a matter of days, Dom is well on his way to teaching Arthur how to research more thoroughly. From there, Arthur learns things on his own, escalates the mere idea of research and turns it into something Mal praises him for. He may not always understand certain concepts, but he can record them, document them, and relay the information back.
This is what Dom needs.
“Point man,” Dom says to him one day. “You know enough about all of this to keep us safe. Do you think you could do the same in a dream?”
Arthur nods, and dreams himself up in a three piece suit and Oxfords and feels very much like he’s running a business of crime-laced security guards and secretarial jobs.
And he likes it.
*
Arthur is good at what he does. He goes on his first job when he is twenty three and one half, a boy, cheeks flushed and eyes wide and Mal picks up a crying Philippa and says good luck, Arthur.
She does not come with them. She is tired now, different, but Arthur still loves her the most. Eames comes, though, crouches next to him and rubs his fingers over his wrist. “You watch our backs, I’ll watch yours, darling. Good luck.” He slides the IV in, warm hands an imprint in his mind.
They are outside in a city. Dom needs to find out a secret that could destroy a family business. A monopoly, Mal told him, and the city does not like it. Dom needs the money, so he does not care who he exploits. He is reckless, a dreaming politician, and Arthur loves him.
Eames is the son, bearded and timid, but today he is going to stand up to his father long enough for Dom to crack him and get in.
It is a simple job.
Arthur feels wild, nonetheless. He is on a high, adrenaline rushing through him. He is supposed to wait for music, something that will make him smile, Mal says.
She has sung this to him before, sweet Arthur, sleep, and he smiles at Eames when he hears it. “I like this song,” he tells him, but Eames is frantic and Arthur is oblivious.
“The kick, Arthur. We need to move, come on,” he yells, pulling Arthur’s wrist and running.
Arthur’s cheeks hurt from smiling so hard, but when he wakes up, Mal is leaning over him and mirroring his expression.
“I imagine you did as wonderfully as I expected you would,” she beams, and she does not seem to mind that there are strangers in her home and a baby in her arms, because she loves Arthur for what he’s helped accomplish and she tells him just that.
*
Eames comes over more often and Arthur lets him in.
Eames has a wonderful voice, cultured and textured and Arthur falls in love with it.
But he does not fall in love with Eames.
He has his head in Eames’s lap and a blanket over his and Eames has his fingers in his hair and he’s okay.
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened?” He asks softly. Philippa has gone down for a nap. The house is quiet, a breathy lull of nothing that makes Arthur feel safe.
“Car crash,” he says, not sure why it even matters to Eames.
“Oh,” is all he says for a long time, and the sweep of his fingers very nearly pushes Arthur towards sleep. “Do you remember it?”
Arthur opens his eyes, stares up at him and can hear the helicopter’s blades slicing through the air, his face covered in blood, his arm crushed, heart pounding.
Sometimes he just cries. “Yeah,” he chokes out. Eames’s fingers brush deliberately over the tiny line of a scar, following the part of his hair, and Arthur squeezes his eyes shut. “I wanted to show her the fireflies.”
Eames leans down, brushes his lips against Arthur’s and smiles sadly. “I’m sure they were beautiful, darling.”
*
Mal gets sick.
Dom tells Arthur that she is dreaming too much on her own, pushing herself into a world that isn’t even real. It doesn’t make sense to Arthur. He doesn’t understand it, so he goes into her room and takes the IV from her and cries.
He just cries.
“Arthur,” she says.
“Are you sick?” He asks, and Mal beckons for him to come lie down with him, because this is what they do when they are not well. He listens, puts the PASIV down by the bed and curls up next to her, wiping his cheeks because he’s crying and Mal is sick and he doesn’t know what to do.
“I don’t know,” she says, stroking through his hair. “I want to dream. I don’t want to be here right now.”
“But what about Philippa?” What about me?
“She is a baby. She won’t ever know I was gone.” And it’s true. Mal can dream for hours and weeks and years and Philippa will never know.
“But I will,” he protests, because he doesn’t want Mal to dream if he’s not there. He loves her, soft eyes, bubblegum lips, he loves her.
“I know. I’m sorry, Arthur.”
And that’s it.
*
Arthur, like a good point man, does his research.
Mal is depressed. She is unhappy because she has had Philippa, and she does not know what to do with a child, with a family. But it doesn’t make sense to Arthur, because families are happy with a new baby. They buy clothes and toys and laugh and smile and Arthur hasn’t seen Mal do any of these things in a long time.
“My sister wasn’t sad when she had a baby,” Arthur tells Eames, sitting down next to him and leaning in, head against his chest, one leg over both of his. “Mal is sad. She’s sick.”
Eames rests his hand on Arthur’s knee, well-worn jeans beneath his palm. “Mal will be okay. She has a family that loves her.”
Arthur loves her more than anyone. Isn’t that enough to make someone happy?
*
Mal puts herself under the next day, and Arthur doesn’t know what to do. Mal doesn’t love him enough to stay. She doesn’t love anyone enough to stay. Instead, she just sleeps, and Arthur stays with Eames.
They go to the basement. Dom has another PASIV downstairs, and Arthur wants to dream.
“What do you have in mind?” Eames asks, sitting down across from him.
“I want to show you something.” He does not elaborate. He can’t find the right words for what this is, what it means to him, how it shaped and molded him and destroyed him at the same time.
When they dream, it is dark out.
Arthur is driving a car. The top is down and Eames is sitting next to him in the front seat. “Look up,” Arthur whispers, and Eames listens, tilts his head back and stares, because the sky is dark but the fireflies are not, and they’re creating a universe just for them, hovering celestially no more than five feet above them. Eames reaches up for the constellations, a smile on his face that lights up Arthur’s whole world.
He falls in love with this smile. This is when he falls in love with Eames, too.
*
They kiss for the first time when they wake up. Arthur comes over to his chair because Eames asks him to, and he leans down and Eames cups his cheeks and they just kiss.
“Come here, love,” Eames breathes, and Arthur straddles Eames’s legs, presses their foreheads together. He kisses him again, wants more, always more and never enough, and Eames slides his hands under his shirt, pulls it off, reaching for the waistband of his pants and Arthur says not now and Eames listens.
Eames’s fingers ghost over the scar on his arm, traces its path up to his shoulder, leans forward and traces another down his back. Arthur trembles. Eames laughs the throaty laugh Arthur first fell in love with, and he thinks of fireflies.
*
Mal is no longer sick. Arthur doesn’t know what happened, but some time between the fireflies and now, Mal got better.
She teaches Philippa small words like “hi” and “bye” and “daddy,” and Arthur has the honor of being there every step of the way.
Eames never stays for long. Always long enough to get Arthur hooked, though, and most days, he’s left with a dull, unsatisfied feeling deep in his chest.
“You should stay with him,” Mal says. “You two would be happy.”
Arthur brushes his fingers over the thick-lettered label on the TV that reads turn off when done and the other by the closet that says jacket in here and thinks she’s mostly right.
*
Eames stays close. Every time he comes back, he tells Arthur of the times he’s spent all over the world, always somewhere new and fresh, Arthur’s favorite chameleon.
He has just come from Peru. He is happy and sated and he has missed Arthur, he can tell, because as soon as he comes inside, he wraps him up and pulls him to his chest and says “wonderful trip, let’s skip the small talk,” and kisses him.
Arthur beams under the affection and sits him down. He wants to ask him something very important, and Eames seems to be in just the right mood for Arthur to do so. “I want to live with you,” he says, very seriously, and he’s practiced this a million times so he hopes it comes out right.
“I am responsible and can clean up messes. I can cook, if you teach me. I can make coffee sometimes, too. I’ll always make the bed and I won’t take up a lot of room. And I can use the money from the jobs to help with bills. And when it’s winter -“ He trails off, lost in the midst of his words and he searches for them, tries to get them back, but before he can, Eames laughs and pulls him in and Arthur is so happy that he doesn’t even know what to do with himself.
“Yes, Arthur,” he says, because he knows that Arthur understands how they work, like gears and levers and pulleys, complementary and not always together at the same time, but always necessary. “We’ll get a home nearby with a nice yard. Imagine the fireflies in the summertime, how lovely that will be,” he says, and Arthur could cry, he swears.
*
Eames takes care of the paperwork and Arthur takes care of the boxes. He labels things very precisely, carefully spelling out who each item belongs to and where it will go in the new house. He doesn’t know anything about domesticity, especially not with someone like Eames, but Mal tells him he’ll be fine. Happy, even, and he trusts her.
“I’ll come visit every day,” he promises. “And I can give you our phone number and we can call and talk and -“
“Arthur,” Mal laughs, Philippa smiling up at him from Mal’s ankles. “You won’t be far. Of course we’ll see each other,” she smiles, and she leans in and kisses him on the cheek and Arthur waves at her dumbly before leaving.
*
Next part
pairing: arthur/eames
summary: the lookout au: before he was arthur, he was chris pratt. he is in paris with a beautiful french woman who knows his name and loves him and all he thinks of is the way eames looked at him.
Arthur forgets to put on socks. It’s a simple mistake - anyone can do it - but Mal asks him purposefully how he reminded himself of these things before. “Labels,” he says, and she spends the entire day printing them out, thick and blue and white-lettered, and Arthur feels better.
He makes his own labels, sticks paper to the back so he can keep them in his bedside table drawer, and reminds himself of the home he has been given here.
Mal he prints out, and then, lovely.
After that, he prints out fireflies.
*
Eames goes away for a little while. Mal insists that he’s stayed longer than he usually does and is far from subtle in her implications that it’s because of Arthur. “He does not understand your injury,” she explains, fingers ghosting over his temple. “He is fascinated by what happened to you and how you dream. Your buildings are structured magnificently. And I think he will fall in love with you, but that will come in time,” she laughs.
They are lying in bed together. Mal’s belly is growing and Dom insists she stay well-rested, but she always brings Arthur to bed with her and they never rest anyway. Not at first, that is. Mal loves to talk to him about him. She loves to tell him that he did well, that he is fascinating, beautiful, soft, always soft, and Arthur can only stare, because he is in love with Mal and she doesn’t even know it.
But he doesn’t love her like that. Never like that. He used to, he thinks, because he was younger then than he is now, and he was a boy and in love with a woman he didn’t know, bubblegum lips.
Mal is his best friend, he thinks. Mal is what Kelly was to him before the crash.
He thinks of her, very briefly, and he still sees Mal’s lips moving but he isn’t listening because Kelly. They all died and it’s my fault and he reaches up to his face and covers his mouth, holds back a sob.
Sometimes he just cries. There is always a reason.
Mal leans in and tries to hold him, but Arthur turns on his side, can’t bear to look at her because he’ll kill her too, one day. She slides her arm over his waist, fingertips brushing over his chest, and her belly presses against his back, head against his neck and she whispers sweet French to his ear, places a kiss along his spine and Arthur falls asleep still crying.
*
Eames comes back after Philippa is born.
He sits with Arthur in the living room. Philippa is four months old and pink and beautiful, and Mal lets him hold her so long as he’s careful. But right now, he is sitting with Eames on the couch, and that is all.
“Has it improved for you?” Eames asks. “The dreaming?”
“I guess.”
It has and it hasn’t.
Arthur has learned to compose himself better. He doesn’t cry when he wakes up, but sometimes he cries for days afterwards and doesn’t really know why.
Mostly, he writes things down, does research, because when he needs to put things in terms he can understand, he tends to record more in his notebooks, and Dom always refers back to those details appreciatively.
In a matter of days, Dom is well on his way to teaching Arthur how to research more thoroughly. From there, Arthur learns things on his own, escalates the mere idea of research and turns it into something Mal praises him for. He may not always understand certain concepts, but he can record them, document them, and relay the information back.
This is what Dom needs.
“Point man,” Dom says to him one day. “You know enough about all of this to keep us safe. Do you think you could do the same in a dream?”
Arthur nods, and dreams himself up in a three piece suit and Oxfords and feels very much like he’s running a business of crime-laced security guards and secretarial jobs.
And he likes it.
*
Arthur is good at what he does. He goes on his first job when he is twenty three and one half, a boy, cheeks flushed and eyes wide and Mal picks up a crying Philippa and says good luck, Arthur.
She does not come with them. She is tired now, different, but Arthur still loves her the most. Eames comes, though, crouches next to him and rubs his fingers over his wrist. “You watch our backs, I’ll watch yours, darling. Good luck.” He slides the IV in, warm hands an imprint in his mind.
They are outside in a city. Dom needs to find out a secret that could destroy a family business. A monopoly, Mal told him, and the city does not like it. Dom needs the money, so he does not care who he exploits. He is reckless, a dreaming politician, and Arthur loves him.
Eames is the son, bearded and timid, but today he is going to stand up to his father long enough for Dom to crack him and get in.
It is a simple job.
Arthur feels wild, nonetheless. He is on a high, adrenaline rushing through him. He is supposed to wait for music, something that will make him smile, Mal says.
She has sung this to him before, sweet Arthur, sleep, and he smiles at Eames when he hears it. “I like this song,” he tells him, but Eames is frantic and Arthur is oblivious.
“The kick, Arthur. We need to move, come on,” he yells, pulling Arthur’s wrist and running.
Arthur’s cheeks hurt from smiling so hard, but when he wakes up, Mal is leaning over him and mirroring his expression.
“I imagine you did as wonderfully as I expected you would,” she beams, and she does not seem to mind that there are strangers in her home and a baby in her arms, because she loves Arthur for what he’s helped accomplish and she tells him just that.
*
Eames comes over more often and Arthur lets him in.
Eames has a wonderful voice, cultured and textured and Arthur falls in love with it.
But he does not fall in love with Eames.
He has his head in Eames’s lap and a blanket over his and Eames has his fingers in his hair and he’s okay.
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened?” He asks softly. Philippa has gone down for a nap. The house is quiet, a breathy lull of nothing that makes Arthur feel safe.
“Car crash,” he says, not sure why it even matters to Eames.
“Oh,” is all he says for a long time, and the sweep of his fingers very nearly pushes Arthur towards sleep. “Do you remember it?”
Arthur opens his eyes, stares up at him and can hear the helicopter’s blades slicing through the air, his face covered in blood, his arm crushed, heart pounding.
Sometimes he just cries. “Yeah,” he chokes out. Eames’s fingers brush deliberately over the tiny line of a scar, following the part of his hair, and Arthur squeezes his eyes shut. “I wanted to show her the fireflies.”
Eames leans down, brushes his lips against Arthur’s and smiles sadly. “I’m sure they were beautiful, darling.”
*
Mal gets sick.
Dom tells Arthur that she is dreaming too much on her own, pushing herself into a world that isn’t even real. It doesn’t make sense to Arthur. He doesn’t understand it, so he goes into her room and takes the IV from her and cries.
He just cries.
“Arthur,” she says.
“Are you sick?” He asks, and Mal beckons for him to come lie down with him, because this is what they do when they are not well. He listens, puts the PASIV down by the bed and curls up next to her, wiping his cheeks because he’s crying and Mal is sick and he doesn’t know what to do.
“I don’t know,” she says, stroking through his hair. “I want to dream. I don’t want to be here right now.”
“But what about Philippa?” What about me?
“She is a baby. She won’t ever know I was gone.” And it’s true. Mal can dream for hours and weeks and years and Philippa will never know.
“But I will,” he protests, because he doesn’t want Mal to dream if he’s not there. He loves her, soft eyes, bubblegum lips, he loves her.
“I know. I’m sorry, Arthur.”
And that’s it.
*
Arthur, like a good point man, does his research.
Mal is depressed. She is unhappy because she has had Philippa, and she does not know what to do with a child, with a family. But it doesn’t make sense to Arthur, because families are happy with a new baby. They buy clothes and toys and laugh and smile and Arthur hasn’t seen Mal do any of these things in a long time.
“My sister wasn’t sad when she had a baby,” Arthur tells Eames, sitting down next to him and leaning in, head against his chest, one leg over both of his. “Mal is sad. She’s sick.”
Eames rests his hand on Arthur’s knee, well-worn jeans beneath his palm. “Mal will be okay. She has a family that loves her.”
Arthur loves her more than anyone. Isn’t that enough to make someone happy?
*
Mal puts herself under the next day, and Arthur doesn’t know what to do. Mal doesn’t love him enough to stay. She doesn’t love anyone enough to stay. Instead, she just sleeps, and Arthur stays with Eames.
They go to the basement. Dom has another PASIV downstairs, and Arthur wants to dream.
“What do you have in mind?” Eames asks, sitting down across from him.
“I want to show you something.” He does not elaborate. He can’t find the right words for what this is, what it means to him, how it shaped and molded him and destroyed him at the same time.
When they dream, it is dark out.
Arthur is driving a car. The top is down and Eames is sitting next to him in the front seat. “Look up,” Arthur whispers, and Eames listens, tilts his head back and stares, because the sky is dark but the fireflies are not, and they’re creating a universe just for them, hovering celestially no more than five feet above them. Eames reaches up for the constellations, a smile on his face that lights up Arthur’s whole world.
He falls in love with this smile. This is when he falls in love with Eames, too.
*
They kiss for the first time when they wake up. Arthur comes over to his chair because Eames asks him to, and he leans down and Eames cups his cheeks and they just kiss.
“Come here, love,” Eames breathes, and Arthur straddles Eames’s legs, presses their foreheads together. He kisses him again, wants more, always more and never enough, and Eames slides his hands under his shirt, pulls it off, reaching for the waistband of his pants and Arthur says not now and Eames listens.
Eames’s fingers ghost over the scar on his arm, traces its path up to his shoulder, leans forward and traces another down his back. Arthur trembles. Eames laughs the throaty laugh Arthur first fell in love with, and he thinks of fireflies.
*
Mal is no longer sick. Arthur doesn’t know what happened, but some time between the fireflies and now, Mal got better.
She teaches Philippa small words like “hi” and “bye” and “daddy,” and Arthur has the honor of being there every step of the way.
Eames never stays for long. Always long enough to get Arthur hooked, though, and most days, he’s left with a dull, unsatisfied feeling deep in his chest.
“You should stay with him,” Mal says. “You two would be happy.”
Arthur brushes his fingers over the thick-lettered label on the TV that reads turn off when done and the other by the closet that says jacket in here and thinks she’s mostly right.
*
Eames stays close. Every time he comes back, he tells Arthur of the times he’s spent all over the world, always somewhere new and fresh, Arthur’s favorite chameleon.
He has just come from Peru. He is happy and sated and he has missed Arthur, he can tell, because as soon as he comes inside, he wraps him up and pulls him to his chest and says “wonderful trip, let’s skip the small talk,” and kisses him.
Arthur beams under the affection and sits him down. He wants to ask him something very important, and Eames seems to be in just the right mood for Arthur to do so. “I want to live with you,” he says, very seriously, and he’s practiced this a million times so he hopes it comes out right.
“I am responsible and can clean up messes. I can cook, if you teach me. I can make coffee sometimes, too. I’ll always make the bed and I won’t take up a lot of room. And I can use the money from the jobs to help with bills. And when it’s winter -“ He trails off, lost in the midst of his words and he searches for them, tries to get them back, but before he can, Eames laughs and pulls him in and Arthur is so happy that he doesn’t even know what to do with himself.
“Yes, Arthur,” he says, because he knows that Arthur understands how they work, like gears and levers and pulleys, complementary and not always together at the same time, but always necessary. “We’ll get a home nearby with a nice yard. Imagine the fireflies in the summertime, how lovely that will be,” he says, and Arthur could cry, he swears.
*
Eames takes care of the paperwork and Arthur takes care of the boxes. He labels things very precisely, carefully spelling out who each item belongs to and where it will go in the new house. He doesn’t know anything about domesticity, especially not with someone like Eames, but Mal tells him he’ll be fine. Happy, even, and he trusts her.
“I’ll come visit every day,” he promises. “And I can give you our phone number and we can call and talk and -“
“Arthur,” Mal laughs, Philippa smiling up at him from Mal’s ankles. “You won’t be far. Of course we’ll see each other,” she smiles, and she leans in and kisses him on the cheek and Arthur waves at her dumbly before leaving.
*
Next part