fic: nobody knew me at home anymore [1/3]
notes: So, I have this weird obsession with wanting characters in a pairing to know each other BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE. I like the deep connections. It was only inevitable that this would eventually happen. Thus I give you, that fic where E + A have known each other a LONG TIME, or that high school AU that turns out not actually to be a high school AU.
Writing this fic was kind of like pulling teeth. I think maybe I was overthinking. I dunno. Remind me not to write high school kids again. Anyway, thanks to my beta synaereses who was willing to overthink along with me. page 39, eh, sometimes these points of turn just happen
title: nobody knew me at home anymore
author: Fee (enjambament)
rating: PG-13/R
word count: TOO MANY (approx. 25,000)
disclaimer: I do not claim profit or ownership of any recognizable plots/characters.
warnings: underage sex (16/17), child neglect and abuse (non-sexual).
summary: The thing about best friends in a small town is that you don’t get to choose. Instead, you get exactly the person you need. It goes that way with Arthur and Eames. Maybe it’s because both of them aren’t made for small town life, not at all, and so instead of growing to fit the town, they grow to fit together.
(PART II)
(PART III)
---
nobody knew me at home anymore
---
Part I
The Eames family moves in next door in early August. Arthur is sitting on his front steps reading when the moving truck pulls up. It’s unbearably hot inside (the air conditioning is broken again), but there’s a bit of a breeze in the front yard, carried along when the truck drives past.
The truck is massive, and Arthur’s pretty sure that the little house next door won’t be able to fit everything it holds - but he’s only eleven, and he’s lived in the same house all his life, so he has no previous experience with the subject. The drivers are in uniforms with the moving company logo. One suggests that they come back later to pick up the truck and they amble off down the street.
At two o’clock, Arthur goes inside to get a glass of water and when he comes back out he realises he’s just missed the arrival of the new owners. Their car is now parked in the driveway. It’s a very nice car. Arthur can tell because of the way Mr Gregory, the mailman, whistles at it as he passes by, low and sweet like he’s calling it towards him.
Arthur’s dad gets home at six with dinner - greasy sandwiches from a stand near the construction site he’s been working on. He’s a little worried his dad might be mad at him for not vacuuming the living room very well; he’d only started his chores with an hour to spare because he’d been out in the front yard hoping to catch a glimpse of the new neighbours.
Luckily, his dad is too tired. He smells like cigarettes, which means he’s stopped at a bar. Arthur figures he’s halfway to drunk already, and Arthur probably won’t hear a word from him all night.
By the time it’s completely dark, Arthur’s dad is passed out on the sofa. Arthur sits in the shadowy part of the porch, breathing evenly. There are a few fireflies because it’s been a humid summer. Arthur watches them to the soundtrack of the washing machine running, a low hum through the open door. The lights are on next door and sometimes there is a shadow of movement across the window. No one comes outside.
In the morning, the moving truck is gone. He stares at the empty street, a little perplexed. The new neighbours’ trashcan has already been pulled out to the street, overflowing with bubble wrap and butcher paper. It’s seems odd to unload in the night, but Arthur is not the kind of kid who forms an opinion without all the facts.
He reads on the steps until lunchtime, and then he does the dishes and the laundry. While he’s watering the grass in the front yard, he finally lucks out. A man and a woman leave through the back gate.
The woman is small and dark haired, with the fullest lips Arthur’s ever seen. She smiles dreamily as she nods her head in response to the man following her out of the garden gate. He is tall, and his smile wide and wry. His hands move expressively as he talks, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. They walk together so that their hips bump at every second step. Arthur thinks they must be married.
As they get into the car, the woman looks up and sees Arthur. She smiles at him and waves her fingers once. He ducks his head, ashamed to have been caught staring, but he waves back anyway, not wanting to seem both rude and too curious.
When they’re gone, Arthur sighs, feeling the familiar curl of slight disappointment settling in his stomach. He’s sure they’re perfectly nice and all, but what eleven year old isn’t hoping for something a little more interesting than a polite married couple when the ‘for sale’ sign goes up next door?
“Hello there,” a voice mutters, just in Arthur’s ear. He swallows a scream. He hates shouting of any kind, but he can’t stop himself from turning around abruptly. He’s still holding the hose, and the water immediately soaks the boy standing behind Arthur, who shrieks.
“Fucking hell!” the kid says, but Arthur’s not too worried because the boy is laughing hysterically.
“Uh…sorry,” Arthur says, releasing the clamp on the nozzle to stop the water flow. “I’m sorry. That was…accidental.”
The boy is smiling, and Arthur guesses he must be the kid of the couple next door, because he’s got that same wide grin of the man but with the woman’s full, soft lips. His hair is dripping into his eyes, and the boy shakes his head like a dog, getting little speckles of water all down Arthur’s shirt. He grimaces so he won’t start laughing as well.
“You’re alright,” the boy says. “It’s too hot anyway.” He pushes his hair out of his eyes un-self-consciously, leaving it in a heap on the top of his head. “I’m Eliot, but no-one calls me that because it’s a ridiculous name. You can call me Eames. I’ve just moved in next door. Are you my new neighbour, or just really in to watering stranger’s gardens?’
“I’m Arthur.”
“You’re very talkative, Arthur.”
“You’re very English, Eames,” Arthur replies, perfectly deadpan.
Eames laughs again, and says, “I’m from London.”
“London?” Arthur asks, dubiously. “You moved from London to Southern Illinois?”
Eames’ mouth twists, like he is trying to decide if he should be a little sad. “I had an unconventional childhood,” he says finally. “I think my parents are trying to make up for it, but maybe they’ve gone a little too far in the opposite direction.”
“Oh,” Arthur says. “Do you want some lemonade? We’ll have to make it from the powder.”
“Do you even know how?” Eames asks, raising an eyebrow. “You look a little young to be traipsing about on your own, making lemonade and watering the grass without ‘adult supervision’.”
“I’m almost twelve,” Arthur replies, annoyed. “How old do you have to be to know not to stick your fingers in the plug sockets or hang your sleeve over the stove?”
Eames puts his hands up defensively. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to suggest you were incompetent or whatever. Run along then - make me some lemonade.”
Arthur rolls his eyes, but he does it anyway.
---
The thing about best friends in a small town is that you don’t get to choose. Instead, you get exactly the person you need.
It goes that way with Arthur and Eames. Eames is in the grade above Arthur at school, and the two of them are opposites at the most essential levels, but something about their dynamic clicks just right.
They spend hours laying in the grass in Arthur’s backyard, talking about nothing. They build a blanket fort in Eames’s basement and watch old films on the projector, eating candy until they’re sick with it. They have opposite tastes in books, and the same in music. Neither wants to be just like the other, but they both want to be just right for each other.
Maybe it’s the way Arthur doesn’t take any of Eames’ bullshit, because Eames is pretty much a pathological liar and a kleptomaniac, and someone has to totally ignore his attention-seeking ways before he starts to believe he’s a great as he pretends to be. Maybe it’s the way Eames really listens to Arthur when he talks, somehow knowing that even if Arthur speaks and moves like he’s about twenty years older than he really is, at heart he’s just a little kid who’s starved for affection.
Maybe it’s the way both of them aren’t made for small town life, not at all, and so instead of growing to fit the town, they grow to fit together.
---
When Arthur is thirteen and a half, he has the worst Christmas of his life. He can’t imagine that Christmas will be better from there on out; in fact, at the time, it seems like the beginning of everything awful.
Arthur knows his dad is pretty bad as far as fathers go. He understands that even if he could be a little bit better at whatever he’s doing wrong, his dad wouldn’t stop screaming at him and throwing plates so they smash against the wall just left of Arthur’s head. He’s never actually hurt Arthur physically, so Arthur counts that as a win and remembers the time Eames’ mom told him he was absolutely brilliant and gave him a huge hug just for fixing the dishwasher. It’s okay - it’s not great, but it’s okay. Arthur keeps out of his dad’s way for most of the time, anyway.
For Christmas, though, his dad usually makes an effort. They have a plastic tree, which they put in the corner of the living room next to the TV. Arthur hangs two stockings on the wall above the fake fireplace.
Arthur’s dad buys a rotisserie chicken and makes instant mashed potatoes for Christmas Eve and when Arthur wakes up the next morning he puts his dad’s present, which he bought with the money he makes washing Mrs Leonard’s car every Sunday, under the tree. Arthur opens his present from his Dad, which is usually something Arthur doesn’t really want like a baseball bat or a skateboard, but Arthur doesn’t care because he understands the meaning of ‘it’s the thought that counts’ better than most people.
Except, when Arthur’s thirteen, none of this happens. Arthur’s dad forgets, or maybe he doesn’t care enough anymore. Arthur’s not sure, and it doesn’t really matter. On Christmas Eve, he goes out into the backyard where his dad is chain smoking and asks, “Do you want me to make the mashed potatoes?”
“What for?” Arthur’s dad replies.
“Uh…Christmas?” Arthur supplies.
“You really want to play at that? Christmas is for families.”
“Well, what are we?” Arthur asks, knowing he’s already too close to pushing it.
“We ain’t nothing. Go to bed; I can’t deal with you tonight.”
“It’s only four-thirty,” Arthur says. His dad drops his cigarette on the ground and crushes the paper into the cement. His fingers shake. Arthur swallows thickly.
“I said ‘go to bed’, Arthur.”
It scares Arthur, how easy it is for him to choke down his tears and shrug as he walks back into the house. He’s not even surprised, really. This past year, their whole relationship has gone from bad to worse. It’s not even based on anything tangible that Arthur can mark out.
Maybe it’s because his father has been drinking more, or maybe it’s because Arthur doesn’t actively depend on his dad to keep him alive like he did when he was younger. Now they are just two strangers inhabiting the same space suffering from a serious power imbalance. Arthur finds it easier not to pick out patterns. It’s futile. Pure cruelty is random.
Arthur goes upstairs and reads for a long time. He can hear Christmas carols coming from Eames’ house, and the high, sweet bell-like notes of Eames’ mom joining in with the choir on their vintage record player. Arthur falls asleep without turning his light out and dreams that he and Eames are in the house in London that Eames sometimes talks about with a little edge of longing. In Arthur’s dream, they are older and graceful and dressed like gentlemen, and Eames reads “A Christmas Carol” out loud and gives him a blue silk tie that feels like water and money and freedom in his hands.
He wakes up early the next morning, and there is a spark of dreaded hope caught in his chest. Arthur hates feeling hopeful more than anything else, because he’s always disappointed. Nevertheless, he can’t help but think that maybe his father didn’t mean what he said, and that the Christmas tree will be downstairs and they’ll have chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.
He runs downstairs, taking the steps two at a time.
Of course, nothing’s changed.
His dad’s isn’t even awake; he’s passed out on the sofa with an empty whisky bottle knocked from his fingers, spilling across the floor.
Arthur goes out to sit on the front porch. It’s way too cold to be sitting around outside, especially in pyjamas, but sometimes Arthur gets a feeling in his stomach that means he just can’t be inside for a minute longer. He gets all riled up and his ribcage starts to feel too small for the size of his breaths and he has to sit in the wind until the feeling subsides. What he wants most is to go away, away, away - to Chicago, maybe - any city, somewhere with space.
When his fingers turn blue, Arthur goes back in and eats a bowl of cereal. He watches TV until his dad gets up and tells him to wash the dishes, and after he finishes them he lies on his bed and thinks about how big the world is. Someday, Arthur thinks, I’m going to be out there, instead of in here.
He goes running after dark. Arthur loves to run in the dark because he can’t see anything well, except for the flashes of other people’s lives lit up through their windows. He likes collecting little snippets of information about other people. The Brown family eat the exact same spaghetti Bolognese every night. Roger Smith is building an old car in his shed and he doesn’t want his wife to know.
He’s free when he runs, unfolding out into all his limbs. He’s the best on the track team, and he always wins when they compete against Saline County, even though he’s a year younger than anyone on their team. People often mistake Arthur for being small, but he isn’t. He’s just slim, and not so gangly like most teenagers are. He falls into just the right pace; the rhythm. Running is all about falling. It’s about tipping down and catching himself, but the fall is the beautiful part.
When he finally circles back home, there’s a figure slumped against the front steps, sprawled out on the cement pathway. “Eames?” he asks, breathing hard.
“Arthur!” Eames looks really angry, and Arthur wants to tell him to go back home, because he’s in an almost okay mood again and it might break him if even Eames wants to shout at him about God knows what.
“Merry Christmas,” Arthur says, walking up the steps and around Eames, who is clambering to his feet. If Arthur wasn’t wary of Eames’ tight expression, he’d knock him back down into the grass with that soft-edged violence built into all boys of a certain age. They’d lie in the yard and talk about whatever books Eames got for Christmas and make bets about which of them could read faster. Then, Arthur could go to bed happy instead of just not miserable.
“I came over to give you your present,” Eames says. “So, I knocked on your door and your dad answered, and I asked if I could talk to you, and he said he didn’t know where you’d gone because he hadn’t seen you since this morning, and I asked how your Christmas had been, and he said he was “done putting on a fucking show” because “that boy’s not a kid anymore” and that you hadn’t had Christmas.”
“Yes, well…” Arthur says. He can’t bring himself to be embarrassed about how rude his dad is in front of Eames. There’s got to be at least one person in the world who knows Arthur and all the shit he deals with and likes him anyway, and so far, Eames has been it.
“No Christmas, Arthur?”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” Arthur asks, leaning against the front door and scrubbing his hand through his hair.
The lights in Arthur’s house aren’t on. Eames’ eyes are bright, lit only on one side with the glow coming from streetlamps. “I don’t know, Arthur. I just…I’m just…angry about…him.”
Arthur dips his head and smiles despite himself. “God, Eames. What are you supposed to do about it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t sorted it, yet.”
Arthur sighs at that familiar scheming expression on Eames’ face. “You’re not going to…”
“I’m not going to try to talk to your dad - we both know that wouldn’t help anything. No, don’t worry about it. Look, do you want to stay the night?”
“Are your parents okay with it?”
Eames waves his hand broadly. “They’d have you as a son if only you’d let them.”
“Yes, well, I’ve already got a parent.” Arthur says, smiling despite himself.
Eames doesn’t say anything, because they don’t really talk about Arthur’s dad, but he can see the way Eames frowns and turns away and he knows Eames is thinking so you say. Arthur agrees to stay over at Eames’ anyway and the dark line between his brows disappears.
Arthur doesn’t bother telling his dad where he’s going - he won’t care, anyway. Arthur spends so much time at Eames’ house he’s got a toothbrush and clothes in Eames’ room; he doesn’t think about the fact that he can count the number of times Eames has been inside Arthur’s house on one hand.
Eames’ parents are sitting on the sofa watching a black-and-white film with subtitles when he and Arthur walk past the living room. “Hello, dears,” Eames mother calls when she sees them.
“You can go upstairs, I’ll follow you in a minute,” Eames says, detouring into the living room.
Arthur takes the stairs two at a time. He stretches out on Eames bed, kicking his shoes off. He pulls a comic out from under his back that he’d accidentally collapsed on. It’s the newest issue, but the light is too dim to read by. The bed smells like Eames, safe and a little stale in that boyish, best friend sort of way. Arthur falls asleep with his face pressed into the pillows, waking only briefly when Eames crawls under the covers, nudging him to one side.
“Goodnight, Arthur,” Eames whispers.
“G’night,” Arthur mumbles back, words turning into a yawn.
When Arthur wakes up, Eames is gone again. Arthur stumbles down the hall to brush his teeth and take a shower. He finds a pair of his jeans in one of Eames’ desk drawers; he can’t find a shirt, so he just puts on one of Eames’. Eames is only two inches taller than Arthur, but he’s broader, so the extra space in the shoulders makes the sleeves hang down to his fingertips and he has to keep pushing them up over his elbows.
He goes down the stairs, and Eames’ mom meets him at the kitchen door. “Merry Christmas, Arthur!” she says, smiling dreamily. “Two pancakes or three?”
Eames’ mom’s version of pancakes is closer to crepes than what Arthur is used to, but they’re amazing anyway. “Three,” he says, smiling.
“Happy Christmas, Arthur,” Eames crows, tumbling in through the kitchen door. He has tape and bits of pine tree in his hair, and Arthur reaches over and knocks them out as Eames sits down next to him. “We’ve decided to have Christmas again, you see, because once wasn’t enough for the great Eames family.”
Arthur knows they’re just doing it for him, of course, and he wants to tell them that they shouldn’t have, or couldn’t have because real people aren’t that heart-wrenchingly lovely. He can’t though, because they smile when he opens the presents they dredged up from somewhere to give him; real presents, things he actually likes.
He lights up from somewhere no one but Eames can reach.
---
When school starts back up in January, Eames tries out for the play and Arthur joins French club. The year has been sort of miserable because Eames is in high school now, and Arthur’s still at middle school, but Eames gets out twenty minutes before Arthur, so he walks by the front gates and picks him up on the way home.
Arthur is reciting this French speech he promised he’d give because the teacher says his accent is flawless, so she’s always asking him to do the student presentations even though everyone in the club is supposed to contribute. Eames is reciting his lines for the school play obsessively. He got the part of Feste in ‘Twelfth Night’, despite being a freshman, and he was so excited he’d practically been shaking when he told Arthur.
They’re about a block from Eames’ house when he turns to Arthur suddenly and stops mumbling Shakespeare under his breath. Arthur shuts his mouth, too, feeling stupid talking to himself without someone else doing the same.
“I’m going away for a month after Valentines day,” Eames tells him. Arthur tries not to look crushed, but he’s not sure he’s managed it, because Eames’ face falls, and he bumps Arthur’s shoulder. Eames’ family travels a lot, but they’re usually not gone for more than a week, two at the most.
It’s pretty awful when they’re gone - not that he’d tell Eames. He has a few friends at school, but… it’s lonely without Eames.
The especially awful thing is knowing he hasn’t got anywhere to go if his dad gets angry. There are only so many dishes in the house, and Arthur always wonders what his dad will move on to if he runs out.
He usually spends two or three nights a week at the Eames’; Arthur’s pretty sure that he spends too much time there, but Arthur can’t make himself stay home when it’s dark and cold and his dad is shouting and he knows that Eames’ mom won’t make a fuss, she’ll just send him up to bed, and he really doesn’t think they mind. He’s sure they don’t.
“Look,” Eames says, “I know we don’t usually talk about this, but I don’t want you trapped at home with your dad, so I’m giving you a key to our house and you can go over whenever you want.”
“Eames,” Arthur says, wide-eyed. “You can’t do that, it’s too much.”
“No, it’s really not. I swear to God, if you would let them, my parents would never send you home. I really mean that. If you want, you can water the plants while we’re gone and call it a house-sitting job, okay?”
“I…thanks, Eames.” Arthur says.
“Okay, but there is something I have to tell you if you’re gonna be there without the rest of us around. This is a really big secret, Arthur - way bigger than anything we’ve ever said to each other before.”
“Bigger than how you never actually kissed Alice Ford?”
“Yes,” Eames nods.
Arthur glances around and drops his voice to a whisper even though the street is totally empty. “Bigger than when you told me that maybe you think you’re slightly gay?”
“…yes,” Eames says.
“What is it?”
“I think we should go inside, first.”
“Jeez, Eames,” Arthur says, shaking his head and following Eames up the steps into his house. Eames locks the front door behind him, which he almost never remembers to do. Instead of going upstairs into his bedroom, he walks down the hall into the office.
“Okay,” Eames says, once Arthur follows him into the room. He gets down on his hands and knees and pulls the carpet up, sliding it out from under the desk with effort. He rolls it back and Arthur stares between Eames and the cleared floor for a moment, wondering where this is all going.
“The house rules go like this,” Eames says, speaking like he’s repeating something he’s heard all his life. “Misdirect, misdirect again, misdirect with truth.”
“What?” Arthur asks, perplexed. Then Eames pulls the floor up. Arthur has to step out of the way as a trap door is opened. Sandwiched beneath the floorboards are stacks and stacks of carefully wrapped objects. Some are thin and flat like canvases and others look like they might be bowls or vases or jars.
“My parents aren’t salespeople,” Eames says. “They’re art thieves.”
Arthur stares. Eames begins to fidget next to him, not the way Eames always fidgets, flicking at his buttons or glancing around a room like he’s checking escape routes, but actually fidgets, biting his lower lips and crunching his shoulders worriedly. Arthur doesn’t like Eames looking like that, so he forces himself to say something. “Seriously?” Arthur says. “Are you fucking joking?”
“Seriously.” Eames replies. His voice is quiet. “And, if someone comes over here looking for them while we’re gone, they aren’t here for a good reason. If they’re looking for something my parents have stolen, first you lie, and you tell them the stash is in Vegas, and if they don’t believe you, you tell them it’s in Paris, and if they don’t believe you again, you show them this.”
“Is this the stash?”
“A little bit of it.”
“So where’s the rest?”
“I don’t know. For my safety.”
“Fuck,” Arthur says. Eames makes a sound like a half-formed nervous laugh.
Arthur takes a few minutes to think about things. He thinks about his ex-military dad’s impeccable moral code and opinions on thievery, and about the fact that despite this Eames and his family are exponentially better people, even if they’re apparently crooks.
“It’s okay,” he says, finally. “I’m not going to tell or anything.”
Eames laughs properly this time and after shutting the trap door and sliding the carpet back in place he sinks down onto the floor, dragging Arthur with. They sit, knees touching, looking down at the place where the carpet is slightly dented from the lines of the door underneath it.
“I’m sorry this is so weird,” Eames says, quietly.
“Sometimes I think you’re not even a real person, Eames,” Arthur says, pushing his hair out of his face. “I just don’t know what to say about most things you tell me.”
“Are you saying I leave you speechless, Arthur?”
“Ugh,” Arthur sighs, fondly exasperated. “Whatever, I’m hungry.”
“Cheese on toast?” Eames asks.
“Yes, please,” Arthur says, letting Eames pull him easily to his feet.
---
On Valentine’s Day three different girls give him cards because they actually like him. Of course, he doesn’t like them back. He doesn’t like anyone, except probably definitely Eames - though he avoids letting himself think about that. He’s also mostly miserable because Eames is going away tomorrow.
Eames doesn’t drop by school to walk home with him because he’s at home packing, so Arthur doesn’t see him until that night when Eames waves him over from the front porch.
“Come for a goodbye dinner,” Eames says. He looks more serious than usual. Arthur walks through the grass, taller on Eames’ lawn than Arthur’s.
Eames sits down on the porch and Arthur sits two steps in front of him, leaning back to put his elbows on the same step as Eames’ feet. Eames hunches forward and sets his elbows on his knees. He looks out into the road, thoughts set in the distance.
“Are you going to miss me?” Eames says, absently teasing.
Arthur doesn’t feel like playing their usual game - all sarcasm and affectionate barbs, so instead he just says, “Yes. You know I will.”
“A month isn’t that long,” Eames says. Arthur thinks maybe he feels guilty for leaving, which is stupid, because he’s right: it isn’t that long at all. Eames is his own person. They’re just friends, Arthur hasn’t got any claim to Eames.
“Here, I got you this,” Arthur says after a few moments of comfortable silence. Arthur likes being silent with Eames, sometimes. He feels like maybe their thoughts flow just as easily together as their words.
“You already gave me my birthday present.”
“I know,” Arthur says. “This isn’t really a present, though. It’s homework.”
Eames rips off the newspaper Arthur wrapped the box in carelessly. He grins when he sees what it is. “A disposable camera?” he asks.
“Well, if you’re going to be out there, seeing the world, bring me back a little something of it. Always a thief, never a tourist. You’re missing out on being cultured.”
Eames grins. Arthur feels his hand trace the bumps of his spine. Arthur shivers a little, but doesn’t move away.
“I think maybe I shouldn’t do this,” Eames says after a moment. That faraway haze is still in his eyes. He seems almost nervous.
“What?” Arthur asks, pretty sure Eames isn’t talking about tracing his back; he does stuff like that all the time. It’s horribly embarrassing, but Arthur knows Eames thinks he’s touch-deprived.
“Look at me,” Eames whispers. Arthur shifts around so he can see Eames in the half-light of the living room windows. Eames’ eyes flutter closed and the fringe of his lashes cast long shadows on his cheeks and Arthur thinks, holy shit, Eames is going to kiss me. Then Eames kisses him. He leans down and presses his mouth to Arthur’s - softly, lips dry and closed.
Arthur feels his shoulders tense just as his own eyes flutter shut, tilting his head so his nose won’t bump into Eames’. Eames pulls back and grins.
“There we go,” Eames says, rubbing his thumb across Arthur’s cheek. “You reminded me, before, about how I didn’t really ever kiss Alice Ford. It’s all right for you, being thirteen and unkissed, but I was running out of time, especially if I’m going to stick ahead of the curve.”
Arthur looks at the ground, touching his lips with almost shaky fingers. “You’re awful, Eames,” he says. He means to laugh, but it comes out almost serious. “You know, some people might not want their best friend to just steal their first kiss from them so unceremoniously.”
“Well, let’s hope you’re not one of those people,” Eames murmurs, grinning.
Eames’ mom calls them in for dinner then. They eat quickly and go up to Eames’ bedroom. Eames tells Arthur about all the extra work the director for the school play is making him do so that he doesn’t fall too far behind in rehearsals, and Arthur tells Eames about this new TV show he’s been watching. Eames falls asleep a little after midnight, fingers tangling into Arthur’s hair.
Arthur shifts, feeling the gentle pressure of Eames hands cradling his skull, and just as he falls asleep, he brings one almost-shaking hand up to touch his lips again, feeling for something different about them, some sort of proof that Eames ever kissed him at all. It’s Valentine’s Day, Eames he thinks, Did you really do that on Valentine’s Day, you idiot?.
Arthur sleeps in Eames’ bed every one of the twenty-eight nights he’s gone.
---
It’s a little after midnight when Arthur wakes to the feeling of Eames collapsing down on the bed beside him. The springs all creak. Eames has gotten in the terrible habit of collapsing angrily or lazily as opposed to sitting down. Arthur is pretty sure this is a side affect of turning sixteen and that he should only be thankful Eames hasn’t got really awful acne too.
Arthur jolts up. Eames smells stale like the recycled air on a plane; the scent is familiar, and it reminds him of a little under two years ago, the first time he’d stayed at Eames’ while the family was gone, feeling Eames’ stupid friendly kiss every night without meaning to. Waiting for Eames to come home, the feeling of want tugging under his breastbone in a way a thirteen year old can’t really understand.
Not much has changed, except maybe at fifteen, Arthur’s feelings of once-distant and glacially slow-moving longing are a little more obvious to him, and a little too near.
“How was Rome?” Arthur asks, rubbing his eyes and yawing. Even in the darkness of the room, Eames doesn’t look well. His skin has a healthy glow of sun exposure, but he seems much too thin and there are dark circles of insomnia smudged under his eyes.
“You aren’t supposed to know where we were, Arthur,” Eames says. His voice is a low growl, sounding overused and exhausted. His accent is a bit mixed up, rolling with unusual cadence, which Arthur knows means he must have been playing parts for a con. Eames kicks off his shoes and scoots fully onto the bed so his back can rest against Arthur’s mountain of pillows.
“You left a load of booking confirmation printouts in your desk. I found them when I was looking for some pencils. You’re terrible about covering your tracks.”
“Why would we need to cover our tracks when you’re here, lolling about like a common vagrant, misdirecting attention?”
“I’m a common vagrant?” Arthur scoffs. He moves a little to the side so Eames can lie down properly.
They lie still for a long time, Arthur remembering the feel of Eames filling up all the space in a room like he does, and Eames relearning the patterns of the ceiling.
“Rome was awful,” Eames says, finally. He says it quietly, so that Arthur knows it’s a secret. “I slept with this guy.”
Arthur is caught off guard by a sudden, chokingly intense wave of jealousy. He sucks in a gasping breath, praying it sounds like surprise and not terrible, directionless anger. He grits out a carefully neutral, “What was his name?” He’s sure he sounds like there is something horribly wrong with him. He can only hope Eames interprets it as worry.
“I don’t know. I mean, he gave the name Demas, but it probably wasn’t real,” Eames says. He’s turned towards Arthur a little nervously, but Arthur is pretty sure he hasn’t caught on. “He was working the job with us, and…” He coughs and trails away like he can’t make himself finish the sentence.
“Fuck,” Arthur says, breathing through his nose shallowly. “Fuck.”
Arthur knows he’s about to lose it, so he shoves the seething turmoil of emotions away Eames isn’t struck speechless by anything, and it makes Arthur scared that he has been now.
“Hey,” he says, managing, finally to sound slightly natural. “It’s okay, Eames. You can tell me. He didn’t….”
Eames grins with a wry sharp twist to him mouth. “No way. No. Nothing like that. It’s just…. Fuck. I didn’t even like him, I don’t know why I let him…why I basically lured him into bed. It was such a fucking awful mistake …and....”
There is another silence. It’s awkward like most silences between them can’t be.
“But, Eames, why did you do it?” Arthur asks.
Eames looks at Arthur like he is utterly heartbroken. “I don’t know…” he whispers. “When we’re on a job, things are different. I’m different. I have to be. I just missed…and I just wanted…and…then….”
“Then what,” Arthur murmurs. Eames is barely making sense anymore, and Arthur can’t think straight and everything is getting tangled up between them and Arthur hates it.
“Then he double-crossed us. Had my parents at gunpoint for the money and all. He wasn’t paying attention to me. I had to shoot him to save my mum.”
“Oh.” Arthur waits for a moment to see if there is any more before asking the next question he doesn’t want to ask, but must. “Did you…did he die?”
“No,” Eames says, voice tinged with remembered relief. “No, it was only in the shoulder. But I could have…. I had…I had sex with this guy, you know. Maybe I didn’t really care about him - but still; I felt his pulse under my hands and under my mouth and I could have…killed him. It would have been so fucking easy.”
“But you didn’t.” Arthur swallows against the second swell of sickening jealousy and thinks, he’s mine, right here, right now, and it doesn’t matter that he’s not mine in the right way because he’s still mine in this moment. He slides an arm around Eames because he’s allowed without having to ask. Eames is shaking slightly. He feels almost bony, and Arthur doesn’t like that at all.
“I could have, though,” Eames whispers brokenly into Arthur’s neck. Arthur thinks about how light and carefree Eames always acts with his parents - how he’d never have shown them misery like this, and he realises he is the only person in the whole world who knows Eames’ secret. This is not a secret like Eames not having really kissed Alice Ford or like Eames crying at the end of Titanic every time he watches it. This is so much more, big and dark and only kept safe here. Eames’ lips unconsciously press into Arthur’s collarbone.
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is what happened; the rest is conjecture. Just be in this moment.” Arthur lets his hand rest of Eames’ shoulder, gently. “Just be here, right now…”
It takes all of Arthur’s willpower to leave with me off the end of the sentence.
“I can’t believe I had to put a fucking bullet in my first,” Eames finally says, after a few long moments of silence.
Arthur doesn’t mean to say it, but what comes out of his mouth is, “Well, at least I’ve got your first kiss, right?”
He waits, mentally berating himself, for Eames to freeze up or pull away. Instead, the opposite happens. Eames goes completely boneless, sinking against Arthur like he’s liquid and too tired to hold himself apart from Arthur at all. A sad, wet chuffing laugh blows warmly against Arthur neck. “Yes,” Eames says. “You…you…”
Arthur waits for the rest of the sentence, but it never comes. Eames falls asleep curled against him.
---
Arthur is halfway home from school, counting cracks in the sidewalk for something to do, when a sleek black sports car comes careening down the street at breakneck speeds and then screeches to an obnoxiously abrupt stop next to Arthur.
He has a split second to contemplate whether running or screaming is a better tactic for escape, and has just about decided on throwing down his books and legging it, when Eames opens the door, sticking his head out excitedly. The car’s engine is purring ludicrously loud, like a particularly irate jungle cat.
“I got my license!” Eames proclaims, shooting out of his seat, leaving the keys dangling in the ignition to steer Arthur around to the passenger door and manhandle him in.
“What the fuck,” Arthur grumbles, even as Eames has leapt back into the driver’s seat and slammed his door shut, speeding away.
For the first five minutes, Arthur is occupied with holding on to the dashboard with a white knuckled grip, but it becomes slowly clear that Eames is actually a pretty decent driver who unfortunately operates in terms of controlled chaos. Arthur suspects he may have first learned to drive in the ‘getaway car’ capacity.
“Hey, we’re not going home. Where are you taking me?” Arthur questions, trusting Eames enough that he doesn’t even sound nervous.
“Harrisburg,” Eames says, turning onto Route Forty-Five.
“Why?” Arthur asks. He pops open the glove box and digs around until he finds a few sticks of gum. He places one in Eames’ waiting hand without looking up.
“I want a tattoo, but I’m not having Rover, that guy always hanging around behind the bins at school, do it, because he creeps me out. I am going to an actual parlour.”
“Eames,” Arthur says, a note of disapproval creeping into his voice. “You shouldn’t get a tattoo - that’s a distinguishing mark. If you get caught up in something people can track you with a thing like that.”
“You know, if someone overheard our conversations, they’d never think I was the thief.”
Arthur smiles, choosing to take Eames’ remark as a compliment.
“Anyway,” Eames continues. “That’s what shirts are for.”
Arthur scoffs. “You and shirts don’t always get along so well with each other.”
“What are you implying?”
Arthur has to physically restrain himself from actually sticking his tongue out at Eames. “You are a total exhibitionist, Eames - don’t even try to deny it.”
Eames turns his head away, so Arthur can’t hear his reply very well. It sort of sounds like Eames says, “Maybe for you.”
“Gross,” Arthur says, rolling his eyes. He has to remember not to try to read anything into these kind of ridiculous quips.
They drive without stopping - it’s not too far. Arthur had been slightly concerned that Eames’ plan only extended as far as getting to a town with a slightly non-infested looking parlour, but luckily, it seems Eames has an actual idea of what he’s doing, because once they get to the outskirts of the town, he starts making purposeful turns. He must have asked one of his friends about it.
“What are you getting?” Arthur asks, turning down the radio so they can talk over it easily. Arthur hadn’t been paying attention anyway. He can’t stop thinking about permanent curves of smooth black calligraphy across Eames’ skin.
“You’ll see,” Eames says, raising one eyebrow ridiculously.
“Oh, come on; I need to know so I can stop you from getting something really, really ugly. You might think right now that two dogs eating each other is an ironic statement about society, but in twenty years it’ll just be animal cruelty.”
“What do you take me for?” Eames crows with mock insult.
“An asshole.”
Eames smirks, “Did your great-grandmother die and leave you a lifetime supply of conservative values in her will?”
Arthur finally gives in and sticks his tongue out. The thing is, he won’t answer back, because Eames already knows the truth about Arthur, about how he’s an adult trapped in a teenager’s body and how it feels scary good for Arthur to be here with Eames who he can stick his tongue out at like a child.
In the tattoo parlour, Arthur sits in one of the waiting room chairs because Eames insists.
“If this is your first one, you might want some, like, support, man,” the artist says. He doesn’t seem to think it’s crucial, but he pushes them a little on the topic. Arthur can tell they look like two lost kids in here. It doesn’t really bother him. Arthur doesn’t mind too much what other people think of him.
“I’ll be fine,” Eames declares, with the wry smile that signifies to anyone who knows Eames he finds this all very trite and he is, frankly, not bothered.
“It’s not gonna make you weak to have your friends hanging around,” the guy tries once more.
Arthur can’t help but scoff at this. “If there is one thing Eames is not concerned about,” he mumbles, “it’s his masculinity. Eames could probably use a few blows to his self-confidence.”
The artist holds his hands up defensively. “Whatever,” he says. He and Eames disappear into the back. Eames is walking with his I’m very cool slouch which makes Arthur laugh under his breath.
Arthur gets tired of sitting aimlessly and waiting after about an hour, so he walks down the road to a gas station, leaving his coat on the chair behind him so Eames will know he’s not intending to be gone long if he finishes before Arthur gets back. Arthur buys a coke and a newspaper, and then a bar of chocolate for Eames at the last minute. He thinks about why Eames didn’t want Arthur to see him getting the tattoo. Either Eames really doesn’t want to Arthur to see him ‘weak’, which seems too stupid, or Eames actually wants it to be a surprise for Arthur.
When he gets back he has to wait another forty-five minutes before a girl with pin-straight, inky-black down hair to her waist appears out of the back of the shop to wave Arthur over to her.
“You’re the British kid’s friend, yeah?” she asks.
Arthur nods.
“We’ve got to bandage it up,” she says. “Do you want to see it first?”
“Does Eames want me too?”
“Yeah, he asked me to get you.”
“Okay,” Arthur says. They walk down a hall filled with the distant sound of dentist-like buzzing drills.
“Hey, what’s your name?” she asks, like she wants to know for a particular reason, not just because she’s trying to be polite.
“Arthur,” he replies. She grins as if her suspicions about something have been confirmed.
Arthur understands what she’s thinking when he sees Eames’ tattoo. Eames is looking kind of zoned out when Arthur appears, and Arthur thinks he might have to drive them back. It’s better than having them all drive off a road because Eames is on some kind of tattoo-induced endorphin high.
“What do you think?” Eames asks, voice low and sleepy. He turns around so Arthur can see.
The tattoo is a letter A.
Arthur swallows thickly when he sees it. There’s got to be some explanation other than his name, his name. Shit.
In all honesty, it’s really beautiful. It’s settled under Eames’ shoulder blade, low enough to be covered up by a shirt, but dark enough that the shadow would be visible through thin, white cotton.
The skin around the mark is red and irritated and the black ink looks stark against his skin, but Arthur can see it for what it will be when it’s totally healed. The letter looks like it’s made partly out of smoke and partly out of thin, leafy vines, and he imagines brushing his thumb over it and thinking A is for Arthur, even if it’s not.
“It’s…I really like it, Eames.” Arthur knows his voice comes out a little soft, and confused, but he can’t help it. “What does it stand for?”
Eames turns to look him in the eye. His expression is sharp, focussed. “For ‘Alice’,” he says. There is something about how he’s looking at Arthur, like he can see everything terrible Arthur’s ever done and ever will do, and still likes him. Eames’ voice drops lower, His mellow is totally gone, but Arthur wants him so much more like this, barely contained energy with a sly façade of nonchalance. “To remember my first kiss.”
Arthur sucks in a sharp breath. He just…sometimes, even for all he knows Eames, he just doesn’t understand him at all. What the fuck is this supposed to mean?
Arthur can’t ask what Eames means by it, though. He’s afraid, like he’s never been afraid of anything in his life, that he has it all wrong, and that Eames is just being the way he is so often, all grand gestures held together too tenuously. How is Arthur supposed to understand why Eames does these things if Eames doesn’t understand them himself?
“Arthur,” Eames says. “Stop thinking so hard. Just…do you like it, really?”
And what else can he say to that, other than the only truth he knows. “Yes. Fuck, I guess really do.”
Eames smiles, and the intensity of the moment bleeds out of the room. The tattoo artist comes back in - Arthur hadn’t even noticed him leave. He bandages Eames up with what basically amounts to some saran wrap, and they both help him put his shirt back on without pulling at his skin too much.
Arthur drives him back, but Eames has to keep reminding him to check his mirrors and signal at the right times, because he only mostly knows how. They don’t talk about anything important in the car - just ordinary, aimless things, and then they’re home. Arthur hasn’t got any reason to justify staying at Eames’, and he still has homework to do for tomorrow.
When he’s finally in bed - his own bed, which feels alien to him sometimes, because he’s more used to Eames’ - Arthur lets himself imagine that the ‘A’ is all the reasons he wants. Not only because Eames is trying to erase a bad first time with remembrance of another kind of first, and not because Eames is his best friend, but because Eames wants Arthur under his skin and inked into him forever.
---
(PART II)
(PART III)
(x-posted to eames_arthur)
Writing this fic was kind of like pulling teeth. I think maybe I was overthinking. I dunno. Remind me not to write high school kids again. Anyway, thanks to my beta synaereses who was willing to overthink along with me. page 39, eh, sometimes these points of turn just happen
title: nobody knew me at home anymore
author: Fee (enjambament)
rating: PG-13/R
word count: TOO MANY (approx. 25,000)
disclaimer: I do not claim profit or ownership of any recognizable plots/characters.
warnings: underage sex (16/17), child neglect and abuse (non-sexual).
summary: The thing about best friends in a small town is that you don’t get to choose. Instead, you get exactly the person you need. It goes that way with Arthur and Eames. Maybe it’s because both of them aren’t made for small town life, not at all, and so instead of growing to fit the town, they grow to fit together.
(PART II)
(PART III)
---
nobody knew me at home anymore
---
Part I
The Eames family moves in next door in early August. Arthur is sitting on his front steps reading when the moving truck pulls up. It’s unbearably hot inside (the air conditioning is broken again), but there’s a bit of a breeze in the front yard, carried along when the truck drives past.
The truck is massive, and Arthur’s pretty sure that the little house next door won’t be able to fit everything it holds - but he’s only eleven, and he’s lived in the same house all his life, so he has no previous experience with the subject. The drivers are in uniforms with the moving company logo. One suggests that they come back later to pick up the truck and they amble off down the street.
At two o’clock, Arthur goes inside to get a glass of water and when he comes back out he realises he’s just missed the arrival of the new owners. Their car is now parked in the driveway. It’s a very nice car. Arthur can tell because of the way Mr Gregory, the mailman, whistles at it as he passes by, low and sweet like he’s calling it towards him.
Arthur’s dad gets home at six with dinner - greasy sandwiches from a stand near the construction site he’s been working on. He’s a little worried his dad might be mad at him for not vacuuming the living room very well; he’d only started his chores with an hour to spare because he’d been out in the front yard hoping to catch a glimpse of the new neighbours.
Luckily, his dad is too tired. He smells like cigarettes, which means he’s stopped at a bar. Arthur figures he’s halfway to drunk already, and Arthur probably won’t hear a word from him all night.
By the time it’s completely dark, Arthur’s dad is passed out on the sofa. Arthur sits in the shadowy part of the porch, breathing evenly. There are a few fireflies because it’s been a humid summer. Arthur watches them to the soundtrack of the washing machine running, a low hum through the open door. The lights are on next door and sometimes there is a shadow of movement across the window. No one comes outside.
In the morning, the moving truck is gone. He stares at the empty street, a little perplexed. The new neighbours’ trashcan has already been pulled out to the street, overflowing with bubble wrap and butcher paper. It’s seems odd to unload in the night, but Arthur is not the kind of kid who forms an opinion without all the facts.
He reads on the steps until lunchtime, and then he does the dishes and the laundry. While he’s watering the grass in the front yard, he finally lucks out. A man and a woman leave through the back gate.
The woman is small and dark haired, with the fullest lips Arthur’s ever seen. She smiles dreamily as she nods her head in response to the man following her out of the garden gate. He is tall, and his smile wide and wry. His hands move expressively as he talks, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. They walk together so that their hips bump at every second step. Arthur thinks they must be married.
As they get into the car, the woman looks up and sees Arthur. She smiles at him and waves her fingers once. He ducks his head, ashamed to have been caught staring, but he waves back anyway, not wanting to seem both rude and too curious.
When they’re gone, Arthur sighs, feeling the familiar curl of slight disappointment settling in his stomach. He’s sure they’re perfectly nice and all, but what eleven year old isn’t hoping for something a little more interesting than a polite married couple when the ‘for sale’ sign goes up next door?
“Hello there,” a voice mutters, just in Arthur’s ear. He swallows a scream. He hates shouting of any kind, but he can’t stop himself from turning around abruptly. He’s still holding the hose, and the water immediately soaks the boy standing behind Arthur, who shrieks.
“Fucking hell!” the kid says, but Arthur’s not too worried because the boy is laughing hysterically.
“Uh…sorry,” Arthur says, releasing the clamp on the nozzle to stop the water flow. “I’m sorry. That was…accidental.”
The boy is smiling, and Arthur guesses he must be the kid of the couple next door, because he’s got that same wide grin of the man but with the woman’s full, soft lips. His hair is dripping into his eyes, and the boy shakes his head like a dog, getting little speckles of water all down Arthur’s shirt. He grimaces so he won’t start laughing as well.
“You’re alright,” the boy says. “It’s too hot anyway.” He pushes his hair out of his eyes un-self-consciously, leaving it in a heap on the top of his head. “I’m Eliot, but no-one calls me that because it’s a ridiculous name. You can call me Eames. I’ve just moved in next door. Are you my new neighbour, or just really in to watering stranger’s gardens?’
“I’m Arthur.”
“You’re very talkative, Arthur.”
“You’re very English, Eames,” Arthur replies, perfectly deadpan.
Eames laughs again, and says, “I’m from London.”
“London?” Arthur asks, dubiously. “You moved from London to Southern Illinois?”
Eames’ mouth twists, like he is trying to decide if he should be a little sad. “I had an unconventional childhood,” he says finally. “I think my parents are trying to make up for it, but maybe they’ve gone a little too far in the opposite direction.”
“Oh,” Arthur says. “Do you want some lemonade? We’ll have to make it from the powder.”
“Do you even know how?” Eames asks, raising an eyebrow. “You look a little young to be traipsing about on your own, making lemonade and watering the grass without ‘adult supervision’.”
“I’m almost twelve,” Arthur replies, annoyed. “How old do you have to be to know not to stick your fingers in the plug sockets or hang your sleeve over the stove?”
Eames puts his hands up defensively. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to suggest you were incompetent or whatever. Run along then - make me some lemonade.”
Arthur rolls his eyes, but he does it anyway.
---
The thing about best friends in a small town is that you don’t get to choose. Instead, you get exactly the person you need.
It goes that way with Arthur and Eames. Eames is in the grade above Arthur at school, and the two of them are opposites at the most essential levels, but something about their dynamic clicks just right.
They spend hours laying in the grass in Arthur’s backyard, talking about nothing. They build a blanket fort in Eames’s basement and watch old films on the projector, eating candy until they’re sick with it. They have opposite tastes in books, and the same in music. Neither wants to be just like the other, but they both want to be just right for each other.
Maybe it’s the way Arthur doesn’t take any of Eames’ bullshit, because Eames is pretty much a pathological liar and a kleptomaniac, and someone has to totally ignore his attention-seeking ways before he starts to believe he’s a great as he pretends to be. Maybe it’s the way Eames really listens to Arthur when he talks, somehow knowing that even if Arthur speaks and moves like he’s about twenty years older than he really is, at heart he’s just a little kid who’s starved for affection.
Maybe it’s the way both of them aren’t made for small town life, not at all, and so instead of growing to fit the town, they grow to fit together.
---
When Arthur is thirteen and a half, he has the worst Christmas of his life. He can’t imagine that Christmas will be better from there on out; in fact, at the time, it seems like the beginning of everything awful.
Arthur knows his dad is pretty bad as far as fathers go. He understands that even if he could be a little bit better at whatever he’s doing wrong, his dad wouldn’t stop screaming at him and throwing plates so they smash against the wall just left of Arthur’s head. He’s never actually hurt Arthur physically, so Arthur counts that as a win and remembers the time Eames’ mom told him he was absolutely brilliant and gave him a huge hug just for fixing the dishwasher. It’s okay - it’s not great, but it’s okay. Arthur keeps out of his dad’s way for most of the time, anyway.
For Christmas, though, his dad usually makes an effort. They have a plastic tree, which they put in the corner of the living room next to the TV. Arthur hangs two stockings on the wall above the fake fireplace.
Arthur’s dad buys a rotisserie chicken and makes instant mashed potatoes for Christmas Eve and when Arthur wakes up the next morning he puts his dad’s present, which he bought with the money he makes washing Mrs Leonard’s car every Sunday, under the tree. Arthur opens his present from his Dad, which is usually something Arthur doesn’t really want like a baseball bat or a skateboard, but Arthur doesn’t care because he understands the meaning of ‘it’s the thought that counts’ better than most people.
Except, when Arthur’s thirteen, none of this happens. Arthur’s dad forgets, or maybe he doesn’t care enough anymore. Arthur’s not sure, and it doesn’t really matter. On Christmas Eve, he goes out into the backyard where his dad is chain smoking and asks, “Do you want me to make the mashed potatoes?”
“What for?” Arthur’s dad replies.
“Uh…Christmas?” Arthur supplies.
“You really want to play at that? Christmas is for families.”
“Well, what are we?” Arthur asks, knowing he’s already too close to pushing it.
“We ain’t nothing. Go to bed; I can’t deal with you tonight.”
“It’s only four-thirty,” Arthur says. His dad drops his cigarette on the ground and crushes the paper into the cement. His fingers shake. Arthur swallows thickly.
“I said ‘go to bed’, Arthur.”
It scares Arthur, how easy it is for him to choke down his tears and shrug as he walks back into the house. He’s not even surprised, really. This past year, their whole relationship has gone from bad to worse. It’s not even based on anything tangible that Arthur can mark out.
Maybe it’s because his father has been drinking more, or maybe it’s because Arthur doesn’t actively depend on his dad to keep him alive like he did when he was younger. Now they are just two strangers inhabiting the same space suffering from a serious power imbalance. Arthur finds it easier not to pick out patterns. It’s futile. Pure cruelty is random.
Arthur goes upstairs and reads for a long time. He can hear Christmas carols coming from Eames’ house, and the high, sweet bell-like notes of Eames’ mom joining in with the choir on their vintage record player. Arthur falls asleep without turning his light out and dreams that he and Eames are in the house in London that Eames sometimes talks about with a little edge of longing. In Arthur’s dream, they are older and graceful and dressed like gentlemen, and Eames reads “A Christmas Carol” out loud and gives him a blue silk tie that feels like water and money and freedom in his hands.
He wakes up early the next morning, and there is a spark of dreaded hope caught in his chest. Arthur hates feeling hopeful more than anything else, because he’s always disappointed. Nevertheless, he can’t help but think that maybe his father didn’t mean what he said, and that the Christmas tree will be downstairs and they’ll have chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.
He runs downstairs, taking the steps two at a time.
Of course, nothing’s changed.
His dad’s isn’t even awake; he’s passed out on the sofa with an empty whisky bottle knocked from his fingers, spilling across the floor.
Arthur goes out to sit on the front porch. It’s way too cold to be sitting around outside, especially in pyjamas, but sometimes Arthur gets a feeling in his stomach that means he just can’t be inside for a minute longer. He gets all riled up and his ribcage starts to feel too small for the size of his breaths and he has to sit in the wind until the feeling subsides. What he wants most is to go away, away, away - to Chicago, maybe - any city, somewhere with space.
When his fingers turn blue, Arthur goes back in and eats a bowl of cereal. He watches TV until his dad gets up and tells him to wash the dishes, and after he finishes them he lies on his bed and thinks about how big the world is. Someday, Arthur thinks, I’m going to be out there, instead of in here.
He goes running after dark. Arthur loves to run in the dark because he can’t see anything well, except for the flashes of other people’s lives lit up through their windows. He likes collecting little snippets of information about other people. The Brown family eat the exact same spaghetti Bolognese every night. Roger Smith is building an old car in his shed and he doesn’t want his wife to know.
He’s free when he runs, unfolding out into all his limbs. He’s the best on the track team, and he always wins when they compete against Saline County, even though he’s a year younger than anyone on their team. People often mistake Arthur for being small, but he isn’t. He’s just slim, and not so gangly like most teenagers are. He falls into just the right pace; the rhythm. Running is all about falling. It’s about tipping down and catching himself, but the fall is the beautiful part.
When he finally circles back home, there’s a figure slumped against the front steps, sprawled out on the cement pathway. “Eames?” he asks, breathing hard.
“Arthur!” Eames looks really angry, and Arthur wants to tell him to go back home, because he’s in an almost okay mood again and it might break him if even Eames wants to shout at him about God knows what.
“Merry Christmas,” Arthur says, walking up the steps and around Eames, who is clambering to his feet. If Arthur wasn’t wary of Eames’ tight expression, he’d knock him back down into the grass with that soft-edged violence built into all boys of a certain age. They’d lie in the yard and talk about whatever books Eames got for Christmas and make bets about which of them could read faster. Then, Arthur could go to bed happy instead of just not miserable.
“I came over to give you your present,” Eames says. “So, I knocked on your door and your dad answered, and I asked if I could talk to you, and he said he didn’t know where you’d gone because he hadn’t seen you since this morning, and I asked how your Christmas had been, and he said he was “done putting on a fucking show” because “that boy’s not a kid anymore” and that you hadn’t had Christmas.”
“Yes, well…” Arthur says. He can’t bring himself to be embarrassed about how rude his dad is in front of Eames. There’s got to be at least one person in the world who knows Arthur and all the shit he deals with and likes him anyway, and so far, Eames has been it.
“No Christmas, Arthur?”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” Arthur asks, leaning against the front door and scrubbing his hand through his hair.
The lights in Arthur’s house aren’t on. Eames’ eyes are bright, lit only on one side with the glow coming from streetlamps. “I don’t know, Arthur. I just…I’m just…angry about…him.”
Arthur dips his head and smiles despite himself. “God, Eames. What are you supposed to do about it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t sorted it, yet.”
Arthur sighs at that familiar scheming expression on Eames’ face. “You’re not going to…”
“I’m not going to try to talk to your dad - we both know that wouldn’t help anything. No, don’t worry about it. Look, do you want to stay the night?”
“Are your parents okay with it?”
Eames waves his hand broadly. “They’d have you as a son if only you’d let them.”
“Yes, well, I’ve already got a parent.” Arthur says, smiling despite himself.
Eames doesn’t say anything, because they don’t really talk about Arthur’s dad, but he can see the way Eames frowns and turns away and he knows Eames is thinking so you say. Arthur agrees to stay over at Eames’ anyway and the dark line between his brows disappears.
Arthur doesn’t bother telling his dad where he’s going - he won’t care, anyway. Arthur spends so much time at Eames’ house he’s got a toothbrush and clothes in Eames’ room; he doesn’t think about the fact that he can count the number of times Eames has been inside Arthur’s house on one hand.
Eames’ parents are sitting on the sofa watching a black-and-white film with subtitles when he and Arthur walk past the living room. “Hello, dears,” Eames mother calls when she sees them.
“You can go upstairs, I’ll follow you in a minute,” Eames says, detouring into the living room.
Arthur takes the stairs two at a time. He stretches out on Eames bed, kicking his shoes off. He pulls a comic out from under his back that he’d accidentally collapsed on. It’s the newest issue, but the light is too dim to read by. The bed smells like Eames, safe and a little stale in that boyish, best friend sort of way. Arthur falls asleep with his face pressed into the pillows, waking only briefly when Eames crawls under the covers, nudging him to one side.
“Goodnight, Arthur,” Eames whispers.
“G’night,” Arthur mumbles back, words turning into a yawn.
When Arthur wakes up, Eames is gone again. Arthur stumbles down the hall to brush his teeth and take a shower. He finds a pair of his jeans in one of Eames’ desk drawers; he can’t find a shirt, so he just puts on one of Eames’. Eames is only two inches taller than Arthur, but he’s broader, so the extra space in the shoulders makes the sleeves hang down to his fingertips and he has to keep pushing them up over his elbows.
He goes down the stairs, and Eames’ mom meets him at the kitchen door. “Merry Christmas, Arthur!” she says, smiling dreamily. “Two pancakes or three?”
Eames’ mom’s version of pancakes is closer to crepes than what Arthur is used to, but they’re amazing anyway. “Three,” he says, smiling.
“Happy Christmas, Arthur,” Eames crows, tumbling in through the kitchen door. He has tape and bits of pine tree in his hair, and Arthur reaches over and knocks them out as Eames sits down next to him. “We’ve decided to have Christmas again, you see, because once wasn’t enough for the great Eames family.”
Arthur knows they’re just doing it for him, of course, and he wants to tell them that they shouldn’t have, or couldn’t have because real people aren’t that heart-wrenchingly lovely. He can’t though, because they smile when he opens the presents they dredged up from somewhere to give him; real presents, things he actually likes.
He lights up from somewhere no one but Eames can reach.
---
When school starts back up in January, Eames tries out for the play and Arthur joins French club. The year has been sort of miserable because Eames is in high school now, and Arthur’s still at middle school, but Eames gets out twenty minutes before Arthur, so he walks by the front gates and picks him up on the way home.
Arthur is reciting this French speech he promised he’d give because the teacher says his accent is flawless, so she’s always asking him to do the student presentations even though everyone in the club is supposed to contribute. Eames is reciting his lines for the school play obsessively. He got the part of Feste in ‘Twelfth Night’, despite being a freshman, and he was so excited he’d practically been shaking when he told Arthur.
They’re about a block from Eames’ house when he turns to Arthur suddenly and stops mumbling Shakespeare under his breath. Arthur shuts his mouth, too, feeling stupid talking to himself without someone else doing the same.
“I’m going away for a month after Valentines day,” Eames tells him. Arthur tries not to look crushed, but he’s not sure he’s managed it, because Eames’ face falls, and he bumps Arthur’s shoulder. Eames’ family travels a lot, but they’re usually not gone for more than a week, two at the most.
It’s pretty awful when they’re gone - not that he’d tell Eames. He has a few friends at school, but… it’s lonely without Eames.
The especially awful thing is knowing he hasn’t got anywhere to go if his dad gets angry. There are only so many dishes in the house, and Arthur always wonders what his dad will move on to if he runs out.
He usually spends two or three nights a week at the Eames’; Arthur’s pretty sure that he spends too much time there, but Arthur can’t make himself stay home when it’s dark and cold and his dad is shouting and he knows that Eames’ mom won’t make a fuss, she’ll just send him up to bed, and he really doesn’t think they mind. He’s sure they don’t.
“Look,” Eames says, “I know we don’t usually talk about this, but I don’t want you trapped at home with your dad, so I’m giving you a key to our house and you can go over whenever you want.”
“Eames,” Arthur says, wide-eyed. “You can’t do that, it’s too much.”
“No, it’s really not. I swear to God, if you would let them, my parents would never send you home. I really mean that. If you want, you can water the plants while we’re gone and call it a house-sitting job, okay?”
“I…thanks, Eames.” Arthur says.
“Okay, but there is something I have to tell you if you’re gonna be there without the rest of us around. This is a really big secret, Arthur - way bigger than anything we’ve ever said to each other before.”
“Bigger than how you never actually kissed Alice Ford?”
“Yes,” Eames nods.
Arthur glances around and drops his voice to a whisper even though the street is totally empty. “Bigger than when you told me that maybe you think you’re slightly gay?”
“…yes,” Eames says.
“What is it?”
“I think we should go inside, first.”
“Jeez, Eames,” Arthur says, shaking his head and following Eames up the steps into his house. Eames locks the front door behind him, which he almost never remembers to do. Instead of going upstairs into his bedroom, he walks down the hall into the office.
“Okay,” Eames says, once Arthur follows him into the room. He gets down on his hands and knees and pulls the carpet up, sliding it out from under the desk with effort. He rolls it back and Arthur stares between Eames and the cleared floor for a moment, wondering where this is all going.
“The house rules go like this,” Eames says, speaking like he’s repeating something he’s heard all his life. “Misdirect, misdirect again, misdirect with truth.”
“What?” Arthur asks, perplexed. Then Eames pulls the floor up. Arthur has to step out of the way as a trap door is opened. Sandwiched beneath the floorboards are stacks and stacks of carefully wrapped objects. Some are thin and flat like canvases and others look like they might be bowls or vases or jars.
“My parents aren’t salespeople,” Eames says. “They’re art thieves.”
Arthur stares. Eames begins to fidget next to him, not the way Eames always fidgets, flicking at his buttons or glancing around a room like he’s checking escape routes, but actually fidgets, biting his lower lips and crunching his shoulders worriedly. Arthur doesn’t like Eames looking like that, so he forces himself to say something. “Seriously?” Arthur says. “Are you fucking joking?”
“Seriously.” Eames replies. His voice is quiet. “And, if someone comes over here looking for them while we’re gone, they aren’t here for a good reason. If they’re looking for something my parents have stolen, first you lie, and you tell them the stash is in Vegas, and if they don’t believe you, you tell them it’s in Paris, and if they don’t believe you again, you show them this.”
“Is this the stash?”
“A little bit of it.”
“So where’s the rest?”
“I don’t know. For my safety.”
“Fuck,” Arthur says. Eames makes a sound like a half-formed nervous laugh.
Arthur takes a few minutes to think about things. He thinks about his ex-military dad’s impeccable moral code and opinions on thievery, and about the fact that despite this Eames and his family are exponentially better people, even if they’re apparently crooks.
“It’s okay,” he says, finally. “I’m not going to tell or anything.”
Eames laughs properly this time and after shutting the trap door and sliding the carpet back in place he sinks down onto the floor, dragging Arthur with. They sit, knees touching, looking down at the place where the carpet is slightly dented from the lines of the door underneath it.
“I’m sorry this is so weird,” Eames says, quietly.
“Sometimes I think you’re not even a real person, Eames,” Arthur says, pushing his hair out of his face. “I just don’t know what to say about most things you tell me.”
“Are you saying I leave you speechless, Arthur?”
“Ugh,” Arthur sighs, fondly exasperated. “Whatever, I’m hungry.”
“Cheese on toast?” Eames asks.
“Yes, please,” Arthur says, letting Eames pull him easily to his feet.
---
On Valentine’s Day three different girls give him cards because they actually like him. Of course, he doesn’t like them back. He doesn’t like anyone, except probably definitely Eames - though he avoids letting himself think about that. He’s also mostly miserable because Eames is going away tomorrow.
Eames doesn’t drop by school to walk home with him because he’s at home packing, so Arthur doesn’t see him until that night when Eames waves him over from the front porch.
“Come for a goodbye dinner,” Eames says. He looks more serious than usual. Arthur walks through the grass, taller on Eames’ lawn than Arthur’s.
Eames sits down on the porch and Arthur sits two steps in front of him, leaning back to put his elbows on the same step as Eames’ feet. Eames hunches forward and sets his elbows on his knees. He looks out into the road, thoughts set in the distance.
“Are you going to miss me?” Eames says, absently teasing.
Arthur doesn’t feel like playing their usual game - all sarcasm and affectionate barbs, so instead he just says, “Yes. You know I will.”
“A month isn’t that long,” Eames says. Arthur thinks maybe he feels guilty for leaving, which is stupid, because he’s right: it isn’t that long at all. Eames is his own person. They’re just friends, Arthur hasn’t got any claim to Eames.
“Here, I got you this,” Arthur says after a few moments of comfortable silence. Arthur likes being silent with Eames, sometimes. He feels like maybe their thoughts flow just as easily together as their words.
“You already gave me my birthday present.”
“I know,” Arthur says. “This isn’t really a present, though. It’s homework.”
Eames rips off the newspaper Arthur wrapped the box in carelessly. He grins when he sees what it is. “A disposable camera?” he asks.
“Well, if you’re going to be out there, seeing the world, bring me back a little something of it. Always a thief, never a tourist. You’re missing out on being cultured.”
Eames grins. Arthur feels his hand trace the bumps of his spine. Arthur shivers a little, but doesn’t move away.
“I think maybe I shouldn’t do this,” Eames says after a moment. That faraway haze is still in his eyes. He seems almost nervous.
“What?” Arthur asks, pretty sure Eames isn’t talking about tracing his back; he does stuff like that all the time. It’s horribly embarrassing, but Arthur knows Eames thinks he’s touch-deprived.
“Look at me,” Eames whispers. Arthur shifts around so he can see Eames in the half-light of the living room windows. Eames’ eyes flutter closed and the fringe of his lashes cast long shadows on his cheeks and Arthur thinks, holy shit, Eames is going to kiss me. Then Eames kisses him. He leans down and presses his mouth to Arthur’s - softly, lips dry and closed.
Arthur feels his shoulders tense just as his own eyes flutter shut, tilting his head so his nose won’t bump into Eames’. Eames pulls back and grins.
“There we go,” Eames says, rubbing his thumb across Arthur’s cheek. “You reminded me, before, about how I didn’t really ever kiss Alice Ford. It’s all right for you, being thirteen and unkissed, but I was running out of time, especially if I’m going to stick ahead of the curve.”
Arthur looks at the ground, touching his lips with almost shaky fingers. “You’re awful, Eames,” he says. He means to laugh, but it comes out almost serious. “You know, some people might not want their best friend to just steal their first kiss from them so unceremoniously.”
“Well, let’s hope you’re not one of those people,” Eames murmurs, grinning.
Eames’ mom calls them in for dinner then. They eat quickly and go up to Eames’ bedroom. Eames tells Arthur about all the extra work the director for the school play is making him do so that he doesn’t fall too far behind in rehearsals, and Arthur tells Eames about this new TV show he’s been watching. Eames falls asleep a little after midnight, fingers tangling into Arthur’s hair.
Arthur shifts, feeling the gentle pressure of Eames hands cradling his skull, and just as he falls asleep, he brings one almost-shaking hand up to touch his lips again, feeling for something different about them, some sort of proof that Eames ever kissed him at all. It’s Valentine’s Day, Eames he thinks, Did you really do that on Valentine’s Day, you idiot?.
Arthur sleeps in Eames’ bed every one of the twenty-eight nights he’s gone.
---
It’s a little after midnight when Arthur wakes to the feeling of Eames collapsing down on the bed beside him. The springs all creak. Eames has gotten in the terrible habit of collapsing angrily or lazily as opposed to sitting down. Arthur is pretty sure this is a side affect of turning sixteen and that he should only be thankful Eames hasn’t got really awful acne too.
Arthur jolts up. Eames smells stale like the recycled air on a plane; the scent is familiar, and it reminds him of a little under two years ago, the first time he’d stayed at Eames’ while the family was gone, feeling Eames’ stupid friendly kiss every night without meaning to. Waiting for Eames to come home, the feeling of want tugging under his breastbone in a way a thirteen year old can’t really understand.
Not much has changed, except maybe at fifteen, Arthur’s feelings of once-distant and glacially slow-moving longing are a little more obvious to him, and a little too near.
“How was Rome?” Arthur asks, rubbing his eyes and yawing. Even in the darkness of the room, Eames doesn’t look well. His skin has a healthy glow of sun exposure, but he seems much too thin and there are dark circles of insomnia smudged under his eyes.
“You aren’t supposed to know where we were, Arthur,” Eames says. His voice is a low growl, sounding overused and exhausted. His accent is a bit mixed up, rolling with unusual cadence, which Arthur knows means he must have been playing parts for a con. Eames kicks off his shoes and scoots fully onto the bed so his back can rest against Arthur’s mountain of pillows.
“You left a load of booking confirmation printouts in your desk. I found them when I was looking for some pencils. You’re terrible about covering your tracks.”
“Why would we need to cover our tracks when you’re here, lolling about like a common vagrant, misdirecting attention?”
“I’m a common vagrant?” Arthur scoffs. He moves a little to the side so Eames can lie down properly.
They lie still for a long time, Arthur remembering the feel of Eames filling up all the space in a room like he does, and Eames relearning the patterns of the ceiling.
“Rome was awful,” Eames says, finally. He says it quietly, so that Arthur knows it’s a secret. “I slept with this guy.”
Arthur is caught off guard by a sudden, chokingly intense wave of jealousy. He sucks in a gasping breath, praying it sounds like surprise and not terrible, directionless anger. He grits out a carefully neutral, “What was his name?” He’s sure he sounds like there is something horribly wrong with him. He can only hope Eames interprets it as worry.
“I don’t know. I mean, he gave the name Demas, but it probably wasn’t real,” Eames says. He’s turned towards Arthur a little nervously, but Arthur is pretty sure he hasn’t caught on. “He was working the job with us, and…” He coughs and trails away like he can’t make himself finish the sentence.
“Fuck,” Arthur says, breathing through his nose shallowly. “Fuck.”
Arthur knows he’s about to lose it, so he shoves the seething turmoil of emotions away Eames isn’t struck speechless by anything, and it makes Arthur scared that he has been now.
“Hey,” he says, managing, finally to sound slightly natural. “It’s okay, Eames. You can tell me. He didn’t….”
Eames grins with a wry sharp twist to him mouth. “No way. No. Nothing like that. It’s just…. Fuck. I didn’t even like him, I don’t know why I let him…why I basically lured him into bed. It was such a fucking awful mistake …and....”
There is another silence. It’s awkward like most silences between them can’t be.
“But, Eames, why did you do it?” Arthur asks.
Eames looks at Arthur like he is utterly heartbroken. “I don’t know…” he whispers. “When we’re on a job, things are different. I’m different. I have to be. I just missed…and I just wanted…and…then….”
“Then what,” Arthur murmurs. Eames is barely making sense anymore, and Arthur can’t think straight and everything is getting tangled up between them and Arthur hates it.
“Then he double-crossed us. Had my parents at gunpoint for the money and all. He wasn’t paying attention to me. I had to shoot him to save my mum.”
“Oh.” Arthur waits for a moment to see if there is any more before asking the next question he doesn’t want to ask, but must. “Did you…did he die?”
“No,” Eames says, voice tinged with remembered relief. “No, it was only in the shoulder. But I could have…. I had…I had sex with this guy, you know. Maybe I didn’t really care about him - but still; I felt his pulse under my hands and under my mouth and I could have…killed him. It would have been so fucking easy.”
“But you didn’t.” Arthur swallows against the second swell of sickening jealousy and thinks, he’s mine, right here, right now, and it doesn’t matter that he’s not mine in the right way because he’s still mine in this moment. He slides an arm around Eames because he’s allowed without having to ask. Eames is shaking slightly. He feels almost bony, and Arthur doesn’t like that at all.
“I could have, though,” Eames whispers brokenly into Arthur’s neck. Arthur thinks about how light and carefree Eames always acts with his parents - how he’d never have shown them misery like this, and he realises he is the only person in the whole world who knows Eames’ secret. This is not a secret like Eames not having really kissed Alice Ford or like Eames crying at the end of Titanic every time he watches it. This is so much more, big and dark and only kept safe here. Eames’ lips unconsciously press into Arthur’s collarbone.
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is what happened; the rest is conjecture. Just be in this moment.” Arthur lets his hand rest of Eames’ shoulder, gently. “Just be here, right now…”
It takes all of Arthur’s willpower to leave with me off the end of the sentence.
“I can’t believe I had to put a fucking bullet in my first,” Eames finally says, after a few long moments of silence.
Arthur doesn’t mean to say it, but what comes out of his mouth is, “Well, at least I’ve got your first kiss, right?”
He waits, mentally berating himself, for Eames to freeze up or pull away. Instead, the opposite happens. Eames goes completely boneless, sinking against Arthur like he’s liquid and too tired to hold himself apart from Arthur at all. A sad, wet chuffing laugh blows warmly against Arthur neck. “Yes,” Eames says. “You…you…”
Arthur waits for the rest of the sentence, but it never comes. Eames falls asleep curled against him.
---
Arthur is halfway home from school, counting cracks in the sidewalk for something to do, when a sleek black sports car comes careening down the street at breakneck speeds and then screeches to an obnoxiously abrupt stop next to Arthur.
He has a split second to contemplate whether running or screaming is a better tactic for escape, and has just about decided on throwing down his books and legging it, when Eames opens the door, sticking his head out excitedly. The car’s engine is purring ludicrously loud, like a particularly irate jungle cat.
“I got my license!” Eames proclaims, shooting out of his seat, leaving the keys dangling in the ignition to steer Arthur around to the passenger door and manhandle him in.
“What the fuck,” Arthur grumbles, even as Eames has leapt back into the driver’s seat and slammed his door shut, speeding away.
For the first five minutes, Arthur is occupied with holding on to the dashboard with a white knuckled grip, but it becomes slowly clear that Eames is actually a pretty decent driver who unfortunately operates in terms of controlled chaos. Arthur suspects he may have first learned to drive in the ‘getaway car’ capacity.
“Hey, we’re not going home. Where are you taking me?” Arthur questions, trusting Eames enough that he doesn’t even sound nervous.
“Harrisburg,” Eames says, turning onto Route Forty-Five.
“Why?” Arthur asks. He pops open the glove box and digs around until he finds a few sticks of gum. He places one in Eames’ waiting hand without looking up.
“I want a tattoo, but I’m not having Rover, that guy always hanging around behind the bins at school, do it, because he creeps me out. I am going to an actual parlour.”
“Eames,” Arthur says, a note of disapproval creeping into his voice. “You shouldn’t get a tattoo - that’s a distinguishing mark. If you get caught up in something people can track you with a thing like that.”
“You know, if someone overheard our conversations, they’d never think I was the thief.”
Arthur smiles, choosing to take Eames’ remark as a compliment.
“Anyway,” Eames continues. “That’s what shirts are for.”
Arthur scoffs. “You and shirts don’t always get along so well with each other.”
“What are you implying?”
Arthur has to physically restrain himself from actually sticking his tongue out at Eames. “You are a total exhibitionist, Eames - don’t even try to deny it.”
Eames turns his head away, so Arthur can’t hear his reply very well. It sort of sounds like Eames says, “Maybe for you.”
“Gross,” Arthur says, rolling his eyes. He has to remember not to try to read anything into these kind of ridiculous quips.
They drive without stopping - it’s not too far. Arthur had been slightly concerned that Eames’ plan only extended as far as getting to a town with a slightly non-infested looking parlour, but luckily, it seems Eames has an actual idea of what he’s doing, because once they get to the outskirts of the town, he starts making purposeful turns. He must have asked one of his friends about it.
“What are you getting?” Arthur asks, turning down the radio so they can talk over it easily. Arthur hadn’t been paying attention anyway. He can’t stop thinking about permanent curves of smooth black calligraphy across Eames’ skin.
“You’ll see,” Eames says, raising one eyebrow ridiculously.
“Oh, come on; I need to know so I can stop you from getting something really, really ugly. You might think right now that two dogs eating each other is an ironic statement about society, but in twenty years it’ll just be animal cruelty.”
“What do you take me for?” Eames crows with mock insult.
“An asshole.”
Eames smirks, “Did your great-grandmother die and leave you a lifetime supply of conservative values in her will?”
Arthur finally gives in and sticks his tongue out. The thing is, he won’t answer back, because Eames already knows the truth about Arthur, about how he’s an adult trapped in a teenager’s body and how it feels scary good for Arthur to be here with Eames who he can stick his tongue out at like a child.
In the tattoo parlour, Arthur sits in one of the waiting room chairs because Eames insists.
“If this is your first one, you might want some, like, support, man,” the artist says. He doesn’t seem to think it’s crucial, but he pushes them a little on the topic. Arthur can tell they look like two lost kids in here. It doesn’t really bother him. Arthur doesn’t mind too much what other people think of him.
“I’ll be fine,” Eames declares, with the wry smile that signifies to anyone who knows Eames he finds this all very trite and he is, frankly, not bothered.
“It’s not gonna make you weak to have your friends hanging around,” the guy tries once more.
Arthur can’t help but scoff at this. “If there is one thing Eames is not concerned about,” he mumbles, “it’s his masculinity. Eames could probably use a few blows to his self-confidence.”
The artist holds his hands up defensively. “Whatever,” he says. He and Eames disappear into the back. Eames is walking with his I’m very cool slouch which makes Arthur laugh under his breath.
Arthur gets tired of sitting aimlessly and waiting after about an hour, so he walks down the road to a gas station, leaving his coat on the chair behind him so Eames will know he’s not intending to be gone long if he finishes before Arthur gets back. Arthur buys a coke and a newspaper, and then a bar of chocolate for Eames at the last minute. He thinks about why Eames didn’t want Arthur to see him getting the tattoo. Either Eames really doesn’t want to Arthur to see him ‘weak’, which seems too stupid, or Eames actually wants it to be a surprise for Arthur.
When he gets back he has to wait another forty-five minutes before a girl with pin-straight, inky-black down hair to her waist appears out of the back of the shop to wave Arthur over to her.
“You’re the British kid’s friend, yeah?” she asks.
Arthur nods.
“We’ve got to bandage it up,” she says. “Do you want to see it first?”
“Does Eames want me too?”
“Yeah, he asked me to get you.”
“Okay,” Arthur says. They walk down a hall filled with the distant sound of dentist-like buzzing drills.
“Hey, what’s your name?” she asks, like she wants to know for a particular reason, not just because she’s trying to be polite.
“Arthur,” he replies. She grins as if her suspicions about something have been confirmed.
Arthur understands what she’s thinking when he sees Eames’ tattoo. Eames is looking kind of zoned out when Arthur appears, and Arthur thinks he might have to drive them back. It’s better than having them all drive off a road because Eames is on some kind of tattoo-induced endorphin high.
“What do you think?” Eames asks, voice low and sleepy. He turns around so Arthur can see.
The tattoo is a letter A.
Arthur swallows thickly when he sees it. There’s got to be some explanation other than his name, his name. Shit.
In all honesty, it’s really beautiful. It’s settled under Eames’ shoulder blade, low enough to be covered up by a shirt, but dark enough that the shadow would be visible through thin, white cotton.
The skin around the mark is red and irritated and the black ink looks stark against his skin, but Arthur can see it for what it will be when it’s totally healed. The letter looks like it’s made partly out of smoke and partly out of thin, leafy vines, and he imagines brushing his thumb over it and thinking A is for Arthur, even if it’s not.
“It’s…I really like it, Eames.” Arthur knows his voice comes out a little soft, and confused, but he can’t help it. “What does it stand for?”
Eames turns to look him in the eye. His expression is sharp, focussed. “For ‘Alice’,” he says. There is something about how he’s looking at Arthur, like he can see everything terrible Arthur’s ever done and ever will do, and still likes him. Eames’ voice drops lower, His mellow is totally gone, but Arthur wants him so much more like this, barely contained energy with a sly façade of nonchalance. “To remember my first kiss.”
Arthur sucks in a sharp breath. He just…sometimes, even for all he knows Eames, he just doesn’t understand him at all. What the fuck is this supposed to mean?
Arthur can’t ask what Eames means by it, though. He’s afraid, like he’s never been afraid of anything in his life, that he has it all wrong, and that Eames is just being the way he is so often, all grand gestures held together too tenuously. How is Arthur supposed to understand why Eames does these things if Eames doesn’t understand them himself?
“Arthur,” Eames says. “Stop thinking so hard. Just…do you like it, really?”
And what else can he say to that, other than the only truth he knows. “Yes. Fuck, I guess really do.”
Eames smiles, and the intensity of the moment bleeds out of the room. The tattoo artist comes back in - Arthur hadn’t even noticed him leave. He bandages Eames up with what basically amounts to some saran wrap, and they both help him put his shirt back on without pulling at his skin too much.
Arthur drives him back, but Eames has to keep reminding him to check his mirrors and signal at the right times, because he only mostly knows how. They don’t talk about anything important in the car - just ordinary, aimless things, and then they’re home. Arthur hasn’t got any reason to justify staying at Eames’, and he still has homework to do for tomorrow.
When he’s finally in bed - his own bed, which feels alien to him sometimes, because he’s more used to Eames’ - Arthur lets himself imagine that the ‘A’ is all the reasons he wants. Not only because Eames is trying to erase a bad first time with remembrance of another kind of first, and not because Eames is his best friend, but because Eames wants Arthur under his skin and inked into him forever.
---
(PART II)
(PART III)
(x-posted to eames_arthur)