do you see me when you close your eyes?
GUESS WHOSE BIRTHDAY IT IS.
Here's a hint: for a birthday present, we should totally get him this. Or this.
Yes, yes, the answer is (da da daaan) TOM HARDY. And because I steal all my pictures of T-Hard from tumblr anyway, all y'all (hahaha look I'm using it!) should just go look for yourselfI think for his birthday, people should write me ( Read more... )
Here's a hint: for a birthday present, we should totally get him this. Or this.
Yes, yes, the answer is (da da daaan) TOM HARDY. And because I steal all my pictures of T-Hard from tumblr anyway, all y'all (hahaha look I'm using it!) should just go look for yourselfI think for his birthday, people should write me ( Read more... )
Eames shows up at school the next day, of course. Arthur takes an instant dislike to him because Eames somehow manages to look good in the school’s foul dress code. Dress code is the bane of Arthur’s school career. All he wants is to look smart and neat, which you’d think would conform nicely with any school’s demands, but instead everyone has to wear pastel polo-shirts and jeans to school, the logic being that if everyone looks the same there will be less bullying, and this is the most easily obtainable selection of clothes possible. Arthur hates jeans. If he buttons his collar or combs his hair with a parting he looks like an utter dweeb, and teachers repeatedly mistake him for a freshman. He has a closet full of suit pants and crisp button-down shirts that he only gets to wear on weekends. Eames, on the other hand, appears on the first day with a ridiculously tight white polo on, just about revealing the bottom of a tattoo curling up his bicep. A tattoo. He fits in with all the douchebags sitting in the back row of each class without even having to introduce himself.
Within two days, Eames has already acquired enough friends that he has a ride to school every morning It’s a testament to Eames’s obnoxious brand of charm that he’s managed to make not having a car look cool.
So after that first couple of days, Arthur assumes that that is that and their neighbourly relationship will be forever limited to occasional nods and waves (Eames) and awkward silences when they pass in the corridor (Arthur).
Arthur had vastly underestimated Eames’ capacity to be annoying.
* * *
Eames knows after a mere week that this year is going to be a complete doss. He’s already ahead in every one of his classes except maths and American history, and he’s located two girls willing to tutor him in each. They have honest-to-god cheerleaders here. It’s fucking hilarious. Plus students barely even have to wear a uniform. And the cliques! Mum was wrong -- Mean Girls is a documentary.
‘How was school?’ asks Mum when he arrives home, delivered to the door in the height of style in Bobby Fischer’s stupidly expensive convertible.
‘Marvellous,’ he says, dumping his bag on the couch. ‘And I have a date for this Friday. Did you know they date over here? I suppose it’s because the drinking age is so prudish they can’t just get drunk and snog each other at random.’
‘What did I do to raise such a smug bastard?’ she wonders, gazing disconsolately into her cooking. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be filled with ennui and self-loathing at this age?’
‘How could anyone loathe me?’ asks Eames and jugs upstairs to his room so he can add all his new friends on Facebook and send them all messages with smiley faces so they can all be sure of how much he loves the.
Next Door Arthur is in his room again, studying. Eames hasn’t actually spoken to Net Door Arthur yet, partially because Next Door Arthur doesn’t appear to speak. They have two classes together and he sees Arthur drive to school every morning, but he is yet to hear him say anything. He traverses the corridors with a bookbag slung over one arm, shoulders hunched as if someone’s about to attack him. From what Eames has witnessed through their shared windows, Arthur has the dullest life on the planet. It’s a good thing Eames moved in next door -- he feels its his duty to un-boring Arthur. No one, no one, can spend that much time doing homework without having some kind of inner craziness to let out, whether it be in the form of starting a Fight Club, or raw sexual urges. Either way, Eames feels it is his duty to help Arthur through this process.
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WOT U UP TO? writes Eames on one of his notepads, and holds it up to his window. He waves crazily until the movement catches Arthur’s attention. Arthur frowns for a moment then reaches for a pen.
HOMEWORK, he replies. Of course.
IM EAMES, he writes.
I KNOW.
IM FAMOUS ALREADY? asks Eames, grinning widely as he holds up the message.
Arthur makes a delightful little disparaging gesture as he flips round his notepad. MY MUM TOLD ME WHEN YOU MOVED IN.
WANT TO COME OVER? Even dull Arthur is better entertainment than trigonometry.
There is a pause. Then: MAYBE ONCE I’VE FINISHED MY HOMEWORK.
BUT U R ALWAYS DOING HOMEWORK.
Their windows are close enough that he sees Arthur’s smirk just before his face smoothes out again into it’s typical no-expression expression. HAVE YOU BEEN ARE YOU WATCHING ME, EAMES?
Well! That was practically teasing. Perhaps Arthur Next Door did have a sense of humour.
WITH THOSE PYJAMAS, WHO WOULDN’T?
(and there is more fic as well but... i should probably stop spamming your LJ now?)
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It doesn’t take long to make Arthur sigh and put down his book. Both his desk and his bed have a near-perfect view of the window, after all. It turns out that Eames can’t survive more than ten minutes without attention, and he’s taken to communicating across the divide via sharpie note. Arthur has never once seen Eames studying in that room. Not that he’s been looking.
From these notes Arthur has learnt that Eames is in the soccer team already, he’s dating Amelia Fitzgerald (currently, that is; last week it was someone else) and his favourite hobby appears to be preventing Arthur from doing anything constructive. Granted, a lot of the time Eames may not actually know he is doing this, but that isn’t going to stop Arthur from being annoyed.
WOT U READIN? says today’s note.
Eames has never actually done anything to indicate he dislikes Arthur, but Arthur has a sneaking suspicion he’s being made fun of all the same. Still, Arthur can’t just ignore him.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS, he scrawls in return, holding his notebook up to the window. This is such an utterly stupid means of communication. Why can’t they just text each other like normal people? Although that would require him to ask for Eames’ number and that is just not happening.
Y NOT JUST WATCH THE FILM?
MY MUMS GOT IT ON DVD I THINK
Arthur rolls his eyes. IT’S FOR ENGLISH, he writes. YOU HAVE TO READ THE BOOK.
Eames shrugs. SUIT YOURSELF, he writes, and closes his curtains. Evidently Arthur has ceased to be entertaining already, tonight.
Arthur goes back to his book. Somehow, it’s a lot less interesting than it was ten minutes ago.
* * *
Typically, Arthur doesn’t give a shit about school gossip. He’s friendly enough with a lot of people -- math club, LGBTQ, kids he’s known since kindergarten so you can’t ignore them -- but none of them are what you’d call his friends. But when a guy from England transfers to the school and is stupidly hot and happens to be your next door neighbour, well... that means it’s pretty much impossible to avoid.
* * *
‘No need for anything experimental,’ says Mrs Greenwood. ‘This is Tennessee Williams, not fringe theatre.’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ says Arthur. He and the only other person in the sound engineering crew, a tiny freshman named Pao, exchange a look. Experimental? Mrs Greenwood must have got burned by one of the previous sound-and-light techs, because she always begins rehearsal season by warning them not to do anything too weird. It’s a high school play, for god’s sake. All they have to do is make sure spotlights switch on and off at the same time and cue in two or three sets of music. It’s not even a musical.
‘All right,’ says Mrs Greenwood, sounding distrustful even though she’s worked with Arthur for almost three years now. ‘Well, here’s the cast list. Speak to the main leads in case they have any specifications.’
Arthur nods, and Mrs Greenwood hightails it out of the sound and light box before any of the technology can harsh her creative vibe, or whatever it is that makes highschool drama teachers so universally eccentric.
He unfolds the cast list. Jessica Chung, Lisa Schiff, Charles Eames...
He’s definitely deputising the cast interviews to Pao.
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Arthur does not look 21 and has zero desire to hit on sorority girls, but he has nevertheless got a hell of a lot further on the getting-into-bars stakes than a lot of the kids at his school by virtue of being friends with Dom and Mal. Mal is a bartender at Voodoo Joe’s Rockabilly Shack so Arthur gets in whenever he likes, providing he doesn’t actually drink any alcohol. Compared to the one time he got into one of the college bars (he was playing wingman for Ariadne, who had been pursuing a vampiric-looking hipster art student at the time) he thinks Voodoo Joe’s is probably the better bet, even thought it’s kind of dirty inside and the bartenders all know he’s only 18. The music never includes Ke$ha or eurotrash techno, and everyone there is either middle-aged or some kind of retro goth/punk, so they’re not going to try and start something with Arthur just because he looks young and perhaps a little dweeby and likes to wear suits. It is relaxing to know that he is probably the dullest person in the bar at any one time.
‘You’re looking emo,’ says Neela, the other bartender working tonight. Unlike Mal, she has embraced the Rockabilly spirit and has large tattoo of a pinup model on her bicep. ‘I miss the days when the biggest stress in my life was high school dress code.’
‘I’m over the dress code,’ says Arthur, watching Mal and Dom swing each other round on the dancefloor. ‘Only six months to go anyway.’
‘Wearing a tie won’t seem so exciting when you have to do it every day.’
Arthur raises an eyebrow. ‘Is that how you feel about the whole...’ he gestures at her hair. ‘...Bettie Page thing?’
‘Point. So why the long face, honey?’
Arthur thinks about deflecting, but then gives an internal shrug. ‘Sexual frustration,’ he says.
Neela laughs. ‘Oh,hell. Too bad the strongest thing I can mix you is a Shirley Temple.’
Dom and Mal appear at his shoulder, Dom reaching over to snag their beers from behind the bar. ‘No booze for Bébé,’ says Mal.
‘Fuck off,’ says Arthur conversationally, and Mal blows him a kiss.
‘Arthur’s sexually frustrated,’ says Neela, the traitor, and scoots off to serve someone at the other end of the bar.
‘So what’s new?’ says Dom, grinning. ‘You’re eighteen. Suck it up and wait for college like everyone else. I’m sure the engineering department will be a hotbed of excitement.’
‘Don’t tease,’ says Mal. ‘He is in love.’ With her accent, it sounds more like lovvvve. Arthur hates her, a little. Her superpower appears to be the ability to make him lose all sense of poise and start to feel like a nine-year-old.
‘I am not. It’s a... situational problem. Some douchebag moved in next door and he never puts on a shirt, that’s all.’
‘Oh,’ says Dom, looking disappointed. ‘Jesus, no shenanigans at all?’
Arthur straightens his tie. ‘If there were shenanigans, Dom, I certainly wouldn’t be telling you about them.
There are no shenanigans.
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‘Locked out of your car?’ he asks.
The look round. ‘You’re a genius, Darling,’ says Lisa’s boyfriend, bitterly.
Arthur has spoken to Lisa Schiff and her boyfriend Lance a grand total of zero times in the four years they have been going to school together. Lance, on the other hand, has spoken to him on several occasions, usually comments of the “get out of my way, fag” variety. Arthur wonders why he’s bothering to be such a good samaritan and offering to help.
Eames, leaning against the hood of the car, winks at him. Oh, yes, that’s why. Arthur hates himself a little bit.
‘I can open it for you,’ says Arthur, directing himself towards Lisa and away from Eames, who is still wearing his soccer uniform and by all logic should look foul and sweaty instead of like burnished Greek statuary. ‘If you want.’
‘What, really?’ asks Lisa. ‘Awesome!’
Lance looks a little more doubtful. ‘Sure, OK.’
Arthur steps forward, bending the end of the wire against the sidewalk with his foot. Then he slides the wire inside the window and jiggles it around the way Mal taught him last summer. For a moment he’s worried he’s going to make an idiot of himself and nothing will happen, but then the door clicks open.
‘Whoa!’ says Lance, grudgingly impressed. He hops into the driver’s seat, Lisa sliding in beside him. ‘Thanks, man.’
Eames is looking him up and down with interest, as if Arthur’s about to showcase another surprise criminal skill. ‘So you do have hidden depths,’ he says
Arthur considers this. ‘Possibly,’ he allows. After all, he is almost certainly the only guy in their school who spent his 18th birthday browbeating his college-age friends into driving him to Chicago so he could lose his virginity in a cliched and sordid nightclub bathroom. That probably qualifies as a hidden depth.
He’s just about to go back into his house when Eames says, ‘Wait.’
He turns ‘Yes?
Eames has followed him up the driveway, away from his friends. He looks uncharacteristically awkward.’Lance called you “darling”,’ he says.
‘Yes?’
‘That isn’t... that is to say, I realise that Lance isn’t the brightest star in the sky, but he doesn’t seem to be a total arsehole. So... is that some kind of nickname? Because of the gay thing?’
‘Gay thing,’ Arthur repeats. It is possible that Eames is worried about him. Worried about him in a chivalrous but quite frankly embarrassing way. Also, he knows that Arthur is gay, although admittedly that’s not much of a secret.
Eames shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t want to think anyone’s giving my favourite next-door neighbour a hard time.’
Arthur stares. ‘First of all,’ he says. ‘I’ve been dealing with idiots like Lance my entire life, and he’s hardly going to beat me up or leave my underwear up a flagpole, this isn’t an after school special. Secondly,’ he adds. ‘My surname is Darling.’
There is a moment of perfect silence. ‘Arthur,’ says Eames. ‘Darling. Arthur Darling. Arthur Darling.’
‘You know,’ says Arthur thoughtfully. ‘I already miss the time when you didn’t know my full name.’
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/rolls you around on the floor until you promise to finish this ♥!!
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huh, but maybe i should update the ballet fic before i do that? people keep commenting and stuff, and it makes me feel bad to leave them hanging. :(
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lollll, I updated my masterlist today and was like o___________________o HOW SO MANY FICS?!?!?
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