(no subject)
And then I ended up with over 5k of weird, choppy wrestler!Eames/journalist!Arthur AU. My first contribution to the 'NOTHING HAPPENS' club!
Full Nelson
5500 words
ETA: PEARLJAMZ DREW THIS WONDERFULNESS FOR THE STORY. BRB, CANNOT SEE, EYES HAVE BEEN REPLACED WITH HEARTS ♥______♥
Monday
Eames’s tattoos are horrid. That doesn’t stop anyone sitting in the bleachers from openly staring at them.
“He probably got them done illegally,” says Arthur. When he gets no response, he adds, “And chose the design while blindfolded.”
“He probably did get them done illegally,” Ariadne finally agrees, but in an entirely different tone.
Arthur glances around. Ariadne is watching with her mouth slightly open, as is Cobb, but he’s occasionally tearing his eyes away to scrutinize his own body. Mal is watching Cobb with a slight smile. She pokes him on the thigh and says, “The muscular type? You like it, really?”
“I don’t like it, really. I just think it’s admirable.”
Ariadne snorts. Arthur says, “Maybe he’s actually twenty-six, masquerading as a high school student because he couldn’t make it in real life.”
“You spin such wonderful stories, Arthur,” Ariadne says. Now she has her elbow on her knee, chin propped up on her hand, and a glazed look in her eyes.
Cobb is still watching as well, one hand wrapped around his opposite arm. In all honesty, Arthur thinks he knows how Cobb feels; despite having grown almost half a foot since freshman year, Arthur is still thin, can still fit into clothes he wore in middle school. Compared to these sweaty, grunting wrestlers -- well, the expression on Cobb’s face says it all.
At least Cobb plays soccer. Arthur collects Lomography cameras and mostly sits in his room.
A movement out in the center of the gym catches Arthur’s eye -- it’s Yusuf, waving as he rips off his headgear and jogs over to the bleachers. Arthur isn’t sure that what Yusuf does counts as wrestling, per se; it might actually be a strange combination of wrestling, judo, street-fighting, and what looks like reflexes borne from years of getting tackled by his brothers out of nowhere.
“Hey,” Yusuf pants when he comes to stop in front of them. “So, you’re good, right? You’re going to write the story?”
“I’m just covering the match,” Arthur says. “But yeah, I’ll probably come around and ask you guys for some quotes, if that’s okay.”
“Sure, sure. Let me know if you have any questions.” Yusuf flashes a grin before heading into the locker rooms.
“Okay.” Mal stands up and slings her messenger bag over her shoulder. “As much as I hate to leave this beautiful view, I have to get to the library before it closes.”
Cobb stands up as well, and then it’s kind of weird to just have the two of them remaining, so all of them file off of the bleachers and head out. As they walk, Ariadne rubs Arthur’s shoulder, then loops her arm through his.
“Good luck on the article. If you have to keep sitting in on practices, you’ll probably smell like ball sweat by the end of the week,” she says brightly, her hair immediately whipping into Arthur’s face as soon as they step outside.
What Arthur doesn’t mention is that he doesn’t have to sit in on the practices. He’s just supposed to cover the match. It’ll be a blurb on a sidebar, if anything. But he figures that watching the practices will provide him with journalistic integrity or whatever.
Journalistic integrity. Definitely.
*
Tuesday
Arthur has chosen Eames as the focus for his article because they share more than half their classes: Honors English, Ceramics, US History, and PE. During Tuesday’s PE period, Arthur trots over to the opposite sidelines during a time-out, where half of the class is waiting to rotate in to the field hockey game. Eames is standing around with a bunch of people, though none of them are talking to each other.
“Hey. Eames, right?” Arthur asks, panting slightly.
Eames rests his chin on top of his stick. “Yes,” he says. “And you’re Arthur the journalist.”
“Yeah. Listen, do you think I could ask you a few questions later? I’m writing a piece about the match you guys have coming up against St. Dominic’s.”
“Sure. No problem.” And then Eames adds, “Arthur,” which is strange because hardly anybody calls anyone by name, except for teachers.
Arthur blinks. “Thanks,” he says.
Even though no one around Eames seems remotely interested in the conversation, Arthur nods to them anyway before heading back onto the field. He ends up scoring a few goals before the next rotation. He wonders if Eames is watching.
*
Someone says, “Hey,” as Arthur’s pulling on his t-shirt. Of course, in his haste to answer, he gets sort of stuck, fists meeting only fabric instead of the armholes. After struggling for a few seconds, he finally conquers the dumb thing, and it’s only afterward that he realizes Eames had stepped forward and tugged the hem down for him.
“Sorry. Thanks,” Arthur says quickly. “What’s going on?”
“Your tee was trying to eat your head. I just saved your life,” Eames tells him.
Arthur busies himself with grabbing his backpack and shutting the locker. “Yes, thank you. Death by cotton, how embarrassing.”
“I would have volunteered myself for a eulogy, you know. Having shared those last few moments with you,” Eames says. He smiles when Arthur does. “So, hey,” he says suddenly, “when did you want to talk about the match? I’ve got some free time after school, before practice.”
“You know, I really just need a couple quotes from you about how you feel about this season, or maybe even just the match against the Colts,” Arthur hedges as he slings his backpack on. “Five, ten minutes, max. We could even do it before English.”
“It’s alright. I plan on being famous someday, so I might as well get used to long interviews while I can.”
Arthur decides to take the bait. “Oh, really,” he says skeptically. “Famous doing what?”
“Maybe I meant infamous.” Eames grins.
“No offense, but you’re kind of cheesy,” Arthur says.
“Of course you meant some offense by that,” Eames counters. “I’ll grant you the interview anyway.”
Arthur gives up. “Fine. Do you want to meet at the student center? It doesn’t close until 3, which is when your practice starts.”
Eames raises his eyebrows, which Arthur guesses is an affirmative. Then he realizes that they’ve been walking together this entire time, and that Eames is holding the door to D-building open for him.
“3:00 then,” Eames confirms. He walks up the stairs without waiting for an answer, leaving Arthur on the landing behind him.
*
As soon as the bell rings at 2:15, the hallways are awash with students and the frantic hum of end-of-the-day conversations. Everything is punctuated by lockers slamming shut and sneakers squeaking against the floors, almost as if people think they need to be louder to make up for their seven hours of imprisonment.
Arthur gets buoyed out of the building by the crowd before detaching himself and heading over to the student center. Ariadne is a speck in the distance; apparently she’s dragged her sculpture project outside and is standing in front of it with her head tilted. Even from here, Arthur can recognize her dubious posture and sunshine-yellow scarf.
Part of him is expecting Eames not to show up, because everyone he knows is either a flake or perpetually ten minutes late. He’s definitely not anticipating Eames waiting for him, sitting at one of the round tables situated right next to the windows.
“Hey,” Arthur greets as he slings his backpack onto the table.
Eames looks up from doodling what looks like a third-grader’s rendition of someone skateboarding, all heavy graphite and awkwardly shaped hands. “Hello. Ready to write a hard-hitting piece of journalism?”
“I’ll be sure to add this to my portfolio,” Arthur says dryly.
“I’ll try to be completely candid, then.”
“Please don’t. I don’t want to hear anything that you wouldn’t tell your mother.” Arthur gets his Moleskine out and flips it open. He notices Eames watching him. “Not a word about the Moleskine,” he warns.
“Fair enough,” Eames agrees after a pause, although it’s clear that he’s struggling with it.
And then Eames proceeds to launch into his life story, starting from growing up in England and moving when he was in the fifth grade, to his favorite gyro place downtown, to the time he’d gotten in trouble for eating the caramelized sugar they had made in Chemistry, to this gym that supposedly has wall-to-wall trampolines. He talks about movies he’s seen and asks Arthur’s opinion on them (Rambo will always be a classic, they both agree); he talks about noise rock and asks Arthur’s opinion on them (Arthur doesn’t even know what noise rock is); he talks about gyros, again (Arthur’s never been to that place downtown, but Eames assures him it’s heaven in your mouth).
It takes Arthur a while to realize that they’re having an actual conversation. Naturally, this is when there’s a break of silence, where Eames has a lopsided smile on his face and Arthur gets suddenly self-conscious.
“So,” he says belatedly.
Eames brightens. “Oh, wait. How far have you gotten on the English essay?”
“What, for Mrs. Dalloway?” Arthur puts his notebook aside and roots through his backpack, pulling out his blue binder, the one that’s puking up folded handouts and bits of notebook matter. “I think I’ve picked out most of my concrete details, but I haven’t really put anything together yet.”
Eames reaches for the binder, but pauses and asks, “May I?”
Arthur nods, feeling kind of awkward just watching Eames skim over his notes. “What about you?”
Eames waves him off, as if he’s asked a stupid question. “Oh, I haven’t started yet.”
“Nothing?”
“Nope.”
“It’s due on Friday,” Arthur says slowly.
Eames waves him off again. “I’ll come up with something.” He looks up when Arthur snorts. “What? You don’t believe in the power of procrastination?”
“Maybe only in your case. I believe you’re one of those people whose life is great because you don’t give it any other option,” Arthur says, a bit recklessly, but it’s true: Eames, the varsity athlete in honors classes. Eames, whose first name no one knows because nobody would even think to pose such a question to a high school Adonis (not Arthur’s words).
Eames just looks at him. “Come to the match on Friday,” he says abruptly. “You will, right?”
“What? Yes, I have to,” Arthur answers.
“Great. Listen, I have to go now, though,” Eames says, as if it’s an apology. “We’ll talk some more tomorrow though, yeah?”
He grabs his backpack, punches Arthur’s shoulder, and is gone before Arthur has even registered that the clock hanging by the empty lunch line says that it’s 3:05.
Arthur looks down at his notebook and sees the words WRESTLING ARTICLE written at the top right with a box drawn around it, and Eames written below that. That’s it.
“Dammit,” Arthur mutters to himself.
*
Wednesday
The next morning, Arthur wakes up grouchy and bleary-eyed. He’d stayed up way too late the night before, looking at archived copies of The Hawk. All the athlete highlights were about three hundred words, and pretty much all of the articles covering matches were tiny blurbs mentioning the score and maybe a single quote. There is absolutely no reason why Arthur should be thinking about this so much, and he knows it, but that doesn’t do anything to help the fact that he keeps thinking about it.
Breakfast consists of a chunk of Gouda cheese and a few Ritz crackers. He eats it as he glowers his way to school, getting to his locker just in time for the morning rush. Dom's locker is only two sets away, so he heads over there once he's dumped his books.
“Eames is kind of a douchebag,” Arthur complains.
Dom’s reply is muffled by the locker door between them. “Why?”
“He just is.”
“You could get on the debate team with skills like that,” Dom says, and then, “Ow,” when Arthur nudges the locker door so that it swings into his arm. “Seriously, didn’t you just need like, two quotes from him? If any?” he asks, finally shutting his locker and coming into view.
Arthur falls in step beside him as they walk. “I got about a million and a half. None of which has to do with wrestling.”
Dom shrugs. “Maybe he just wanted to talk.”
“But he has his own friends for that.”
“When did you get so exclusive?” Dom laughs. “This asshole front doesn’t really work on you anymore.”
“Since when?” Arthur demands, but without any heart in it.
“Since I’ve known you. Since you tried so hard to affect it,” says Dom. He turns into the Chemistry classroom, then turns back and asks, “Chimichangas for lunch?”
Arthur waves to Mal, who’s sitting down already with her bag on her desk. He would call Cobb a simpleton, but the chimichangas really are delicious. “What else?” he sighs.
*
When Arthur walks in to English, Mrs. Gardiner isn’t there but most of the students are, getting out their things and preparing for Silent Reading. Ariadne, who sits across the room in the back, waves hello; Eames, who sits one row over and two seats ahead of Arthur, has Harry Potter on his desk and is saying, “It’s leviosa, not leviosa,” tipping the chair onto its back legs, soaking it all in, being cocky in the way only a high school boy could be. Being cocky in a way that makes it hard for Arthur to look elsewhere.
“Arthur,” he calls loudly, even though Arthur is about ten feet away.
Arthur looks at him with a blank expression. “Hello, Eames,” is all he says, but Eames smiles at him for a few more seconds anyway. Apparently no one is buying into Arthur’s mood today.
When Eames faces the front of the classroom again, Arthur sits up and cranes his neck to try to catch Ariadne’s eye. She’s already looking at him, though, and makes a crude gesture with a loose fist by her mouth and her tongue poking against her cheek.
Arthur makes a face and stares down at his notebook, drawing and retracing a circle over and over until the ink bleeds through to the other side.
*
As they're filing out of the classroom, Eames catches up with Arthur and asks, “Did you write the article yet?”
“How’s your Dalloway paper going?” Arthur shoots back.
Eames raises his eyebrows. “I took you for many things, but never a grade grubber.”
“I’m just making conversation,” Arthur grumps. “Fine. How’s the season going? Are you going to give me something to work with now?”
“You’re going to be a great journalist someday.” Eames starts walking backwards when Arthur stops at his locker. “Come to practice, maybe you can pick up some things to write about,” he calls.
“Maybe you could just tell me so I can write the article already,” Arthur yells back. Once again, his heart isn’t in it. He stares at the back of his locker, having forgotten why he even opened it in the first place.
*
After elbowing his way through the lunch line with hardly any mercy, Arthur eventually emerges victorious, juggling four chimichangas in his hands. He spies Mal, Dom, and Ariadne sitting at a table, all studying him as he walks toward them.
“What’s going on?” he asks as he passes the food around.
Ariadne takes a chimichanga and does the blowjob mime again with her free hand. She’s really good at it, actually. “That’s disgusting,” Arthur informs her.
“Hey, how’s your sculpture coming along?” Dom cuts in smoothly.
“I hate it,” Ariadne says brightly. “I want to smash it and I’m pretty sure Mr. Daggar wants to smash it too. My portfolio is going to be such crap.”
“Maybe you can turn that in. Smashed abstract art,” Mal suggests. “What’s it made of?”
“Plaster and stone,” Ariadne says. She takes a vicious bite of her chimichanga. Meanwhile, Mal continues to pick hers apart layer by layer, as if she’s practicing for Anatomy dissections.
“Perfect,” she says. “The plaster would create a great dust radius. A write-up would be very easy.”
“Forget my sculpture. Let’s talk about Arthur’s sculpture. And by ‘sculpture’, I mean ‘article’. And by ‘article’, I mean ‘Eames’.”
Arthur takes a calm bite of food and squints out the window, scanning over everyone who’s eating lunch outside. Dom cracks open a soda as loudly as possible.
“Okay, I’m being serious now. What’s so difficult about this assignment?” Ariadne asks.
Arthur shrugs. “I don’t know what to write.”
“You could always talk to someone else on the team.”
Arthur shrugs again.
“Or, okay. Eames is taking Photography this semester, you know. Write about how wrestlers have varied interests and how they aren’t just like The Thing from Fantastic Four,” Ariadne suggests.
Arthur stares out the window some more, then begrudgingly takes out his Moleskine and, under Eames, writes LIKES PHOTOGRAPHY.
“It’s cute, how he’s acting like he doesn’t hear you,” says Cobb. When Arthur grunts, Cobb presses, “Don’t you have to get used to talking to people if you’re going to be a journalist?”
“I can be a newsroom journalist,” Arthur finally points out. “Report from behind a desk. I don’t even have to wear pants.”
“Will Eames be under this desk?” Mal asks.
Arthur shuts the Moleskine and placidly puts it back in his backpack.
*
Thursday
They’re playing field hockey in PE again. Eames, along with the rest of his team, is wearing an orange mesh top over his uniform, like a walking traffic cone.
“You missed practice yesterday,” he pants.
“I had an auction to bid on,” Arthur says. He dribbles the ball and tries to run it past Eames, who jams his stick out and almost trips Arthur in the process.
“On eBay?” Eames presses, as if he hasn’t committed a totally egregious foul. Ironically, Coach Parker is lecturing a small group of people about stick safety, so he’d missed it.
Arthur whacks the ball toward Evans, then comes to a stop and heaves, “Yes, on eBay.”
“Yeah?” Eames curls his hand over the top of his stick, then crosses one foot over the other, toes pressing into the grass in a neat point. He looks like he’s on a golf green instead of playing fake field hockey on a shitty track field. “What did you buy?”
Arthur gives him the side-eye. He looks genuinely interested, though, so he says, “A twin lens reflex camera.”
“Really?”
“It’s just a toy one,” Arthur says hastily.
“Still.” Eames spins his stick around its heel. “Do you have more? Do you use them often?”
“I try. 120 film is too expensive, though.”
“It really is. Heads up,” Eames says suddenly, nudging Arthur with his shoulder as other players start skirting closer to them. He keeps moving backward, pressing against Arthur with each step. The mesh shirt stinks like the bottom of a PE locker, but Arthur can still smell fresh sweat and faint cologne; he might even be able to ID the detergent Eames uses.
“This isn’t basketball,” Arthur complains. His heart is pounding fast. Eames’s cotton shorts keep brushing over Arthur’s bare knees.
“No, it’s field hockey. Far higher stakes.” Suddenly, Eames takes off up the field. “You’ll be glad to know I finished my paper,” he calls over his shoulder, leaving Arthur standing there alone, his hand on his hip, sweaty and with mud-covered socks.
*
Ariadne has to finish her sculpture, Dom and Mal need to do a write-up of the play they saw the week before, and Arthur really isn’t the type to wheedle people into doing things, so he heads to the gym by himself to watch the wrestling practice. As soon as he gets there, he runs into Yusuf, who’s just emerging from the locker room. His shoelaces are still untied.
“Yusuf, hey,” greets Arthur, hurrying to extract his notes.
“Hey. Oh, am I about to be interviewed?” Yusuf touches his chest, as if worrying about the fact that he’s not properly dressed for the occasion.
Arthur snorts. “Yeah, by this world-class journalist. Okay, how do you feel about tomorrow’s match?”
“Well, considering our record so far,” Yusuf starts, but Arthur fumbles his notes and interrupts: “Wait, what’s your record so far?”
“Seriously? Aren’t you supposed to fact-check or something?” Yusuf blinks. “Oh yeah, I forgot: who’d you end up talking to?”
“Come on, I’ve been busy,” Arthur says, evading the last question. “I’m sorry.”
Yusuf breaks into a grin. “It’s okay, I’m just breaking your balls.”
Arthur waves him off, then manages to squeeze in a few questions about their season and the new varsity line-up before he’s called to participate in a practice match.
The bleachers are sparsely occupied by the usual crowd: kids doing homework while waiting for someone to pick them up, some kind of club meeting in the lower corner, several groups of people just sitting and talking. Arthur picks his way to roughly the middle, then starts observing. He tries not to look over at Eames too often; in fact, he’s so focused on it that it takes him a while to notice that the practice seems kind of disorganized. The match to the far right consists of two guys seeing how close they can get to doing the splits. Yusuf is in the middle of the mats, doing some kind of Sumo moves. Eames and his opponent are grappling -- but only because they’re trying to grab the elastic of each other’s uniform and snap it to inflict maximum pain.
Eventually they both give up. Eames hoists himself onto his knees, then looks directly at Arthur, his headgear propped up onto the crown of his head.
“Wow,” Arthur says out loud. He waves timidly, just in case Eames actually isn’t looking at him at all.
Eames waves back, his mouthpiece jutting out like a lemon rind.
*
The truth is that Arthur has been aware of Eames for a while, but he’s interacted with him for only a fraction of that time. They don’t know each other well at all, but the fact that Eames leaves him feeling unbalanced seems par for the course. Arthur should just learn to take it in stride, it seems.
This is the reasoning he uses when, after he’s just started the walk home at the end of the day, a busted beige Corolla pulls up on the sidewalk slightly ahead of him. One of the taillights is out; the majority of the letters are missing, spelling out ‘ROLL’ along the edge of the trunk.
“This is sufficiently creepy,” Arthur says as Eames leers at him through the open passenger window.
“Do you need a ride?” Eames asks, his expression clearing. “It’s getting a bit late.”
Arthur looks up and down the street, as if gauging traffic will determine his answer. “Sure, okay,” he says.
There are empty Powerade bottles rolling around in the passenger-side footwell. A half-full one keeps lurching against Arthur’s foot as they putt away from the curb. His backpack is heavy in his lap, the seatbelt is cutting into his shoulder, and Eames’s forearm is resting on the middle compartment, inches away from Arthur’s elbow.
Eames even has one of those tree-shaped car fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. Arthur reaches out and flicks it, just because. Then he tries to roll the window up by turning the crank on the door.
“That won’t work,” Eames tells him over the chugging guitar music. “There is no window.”
“Oh.” Arthur puts his hands back in his lap. “Okay.”
The smile that Eames gives him seems disproportionate. But, shit, this whole thing, with Eames smiling at him, and the wind coming through the window-less window to make hell out of his hair, and the sun halfway set -- for a few seconds, Arthur allows himself to wish that he had one of his cameras with him.
Then he vows to be detached from it all.
*
He puts in a valiant effort, at least. But in the end, he gets home at ten minutes to 11:00pm, full of vegetarian burritos, his eyes burning from sitting so close to the movie screen, his face hurting from smiling so much.
After receiving a lecture from his mom, Arthur goes up to his room. Everything’s the same as always, with the unmade bed and his computer whirring softly, but for some reason it all seems foreign to him. He puts his backpack down, then spends time straightening the rows of cameras on the shelf above his bed, thinking about Eames’s laugh, and how it comes so low from his throat.
*
Friday
The turnout for the match ends up being pretty depressing. There are more occupants in the visitors’ bleachers than on the home team’s, and most of the latter group are parents. Arthur is glad Ariadne is sitting next to him, even though she’s covered in plaster dust and his nose is getting itchy from all of it.
“This is...actually pretty unattractive,” she comments as they watch a couple sophomores circling the mats. “Like they’re asserting dominance that neither of them have yet.”
“It’s high school wrestling,” says Arthur. “I’m pretty sure it’s awkward most of the time.”
“Eames is pretty dominating though, huh,” Ariadne says, then does some weird, hyuck-ing laugh while knocking her knee against Arthur’s. “Did you talk to him today?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
Arthur doesn’t mention the specifics: how Eames had kept writing him notes in English, holding them in plain view of Mrs. Gardiner until Arthur was forced to snatch them out of his hand if he didn’t want to get in trouble.
But Arthur kept writing back anyway, so he can’t really blame the whole thing on Eames.
“He’s pretty cool,” Arthur adds, scanning the floor of the gym in what he knows is a horrible attempt at being casual.
Surprisingly, all Ariadne says is, “I’m sure he is,” before wolf-whistling at the sophomores, who still haven’t done anything exciting. “Get a move on, boys,” she calls. Arthur shushes her but laughs all the same.
After the match, Ariadne catches a ride home with Yusuf, leaving Arthur alone in his indecision. He makes about eight false starts to leave before doubling back to the gym again. Then he finally steels himself and waits outside the locker room, because he doesn’t really have anything to lose at this point.
When Eames emerges, showered and changed, Arthur pushes off the wall and stands up straight.
“That was terrible,” Arthur tells him, but he can’t stop smiling.
“You’re laughing at me,” Eames accuses.
“With. With you,” Arthur corrects. “It looks like you had fun, though.”
“Sure, getting my dignity squashed against old wrestling mats covered in pubic hair,” Eames says. “Yes, that was a good time.” Then he tilts his head and winces. “Can you do me a favor and check my ear? I’m thinking it might be cauliflower ear.”
“What,” Arthur says, but he does it anyway, spidering his fingers carefully over the shell of Eames’s ear, then shifting so that his hand is half-buried in sweat-damp hair. He says, “I don’t see anything,” but swipes his thumb over the curve of the helix, just in case.
“Great, let’s go then.” Eames pulls away abruptly and starts walking toward the parking lot, leaving Arthur with the creeping realization that he might have just gotten duped.
He wipes his hand on his pants and has to jog to catch up. “Can you give me a ride home?” he calls, and by the time he gets to the car, Eames has already left the passenger-side door hanging open.
“Get in, this thing turns into a pumpkin after midnight,” Eames says as he turns the engine over; at the same time, Arthur says, “I have some Netflix movies at my house if you -- ”
“What?” says Eames.
Arthur scratches his neck. “What? I mean, I have Rambo at my house, if you want to watch it. We were talking about it that one time and I realized I hadn’t seen it in a while, so.”
“The first one?”
“Of course the first one,” Arthur says, offended.
As Eames drives out of the parking lot, he says, “This is why I like you,” and Arthur tries not to read too much into it.
*
Turns out Eames hadn’t been lying when he said that he had most of the movie memorized. He recites almost half of Stallone’s lines while eating pretzels from the enormous bag propped up between them. All the lights are off, save for the glow of the TV -- like it's highlighting how fragile this situation seems, how it could be interpreted as almost fraught with potential, or completely innocuous.
After the movie is over, Arthur gets up from the couch and pads across the room to turn on the hallway light. Some of the mood dissipates under the 70-watt bulb, but Eames looks at him, eyes dark in the shadows of the living room, and asks, “Could you show me your cameras? Would that be okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” Arthur finds himself saying, but it takes a minute for his body to get in sync with his words. Finally, he starts leading the way up the stairs, kicking his backpack to the side once they step in to his room.
“Of course,” Eames says to himself, touching Arthur’s whiteboard.
“Shut up,” Arthur says.
Eames makes an even louder noise of discovery. “Of course, of course,” he muses, touching random things now: hangers on the door handle, the dark grey bedspread, a t-shirt slung over the back of the desk chair, but he drops the act when he sees the cameras.
“Feel free,” says Arthur, and stands around while Eames kneels on his bed, poking through the shelves and scrutinizing each one carefully. There’s a lamp on the edge of the bottom shelf, which Eames flicks on; he lets out a short laugh when he sees that the lampshade is lined with 35mm film, lit up in shades of green and brown.
“This is brilliant,” he says, running an index finger over the film sprockets.
When Arthur remains silent, Eames cranes his neck to look over his shoulder. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Arthur says automatically, but Eames keeps studying him, so he finally says, “Just -- this sounds like the last line of some cheesy teen movie, but. You’re a lot more three-dimensional than I thought you were.”
“Don’t act like you weren’t disappointed I didn’t fit into the jock stereotype,” Eames says easily.
“Not disappointed, per se.” Arthur sits down on the edge of the bed, one leg bent up onto the mattress. “Just -- unbalanced.”
Eames shrugs. “You never really know anyone.”
“You’re right,” Arthur says quietly.
The silence seems to be pressing in all around them. “Except me,” Arthur adds, trying to steer them away from the unnamable silence. “I’m pretty much exactly how you’d expect.”
“Yes, you do have the air of someone who should be wearing horn-rimmed glasses, sitting on their fire escape in Brooklyn, reading books of short stories and smoking Pall Malls,” Eames says in an affected voice. He sits down cross-legged, bouncing on the springs of the mattress a little. “Stop waiting for me to contradict you. You know you’re more than that, you don’t need anyone to validate you.”
Eames is so candid and calm for a high schooler, it makes Arthur’s heart race just to think about it. “Maybe you should become a therapist instead of whatever infamous career criminal you’re planning to be,” he says after an eternity of picking Eames’s words apart in his head. “I’m sure there’s a business in it for you.”
“Do you feel more free, like the world is in Technicolor?” Eames grins. He’s sitting very close, now. “I did enjoy this little jaunt of helping you find yourself.”
Arthur looks out the window and wonders what time it is. Pretty late, judging by the dew on the window and how it blurs the view of the streetlights. “You seriously cannot be this laid back about everything,” he breathes.
“I’m not,” Eames says after a pause. “I’m not, but does it really matter? Arthur.”
When Eames says his name, Arthur immediately turns his head and is wholly unprepared for Eames kissing him. Dry, quick, lasting as long as the lilting pause at the peak of a sigh, but a kiss all the same.
As soon as Eames pulls away, his presence is taken over by the bright flash of a camera, maybe the only thing more blindingly intense than Eames’s wide grin. It leaves sunspots dancing in Arthur’s vision when he closes his eyes -- he squeezes them shut, hard, and listens to Eames rewind the film, clack-clack-clack.
“Your conversations are much too serious for a sixteen year old,” Eames says absently. Then, “Arthur. Open your eyes,” and Arthur can practically hear him smiling.
WRESTLING
The Hawks had a tough fight against the Colts of St. Dominic’s last Friday. Their 0-8 season has been filled with many close calls and heartbreaking losses. Going head-to-head with the Colts proved to be another stumble, with the Hawks ceding all matches in thirty short minutes.
“You win some, you lose some. Isn’t that how the saying goes?” said Eames, who refused to give his first name. This was his second match as a varsity wrestler, and he lost by technical fall, which is a point gap of fifteen. He hopes to perform better next Friday at the match against the Longhorns.
Full Nelson
5500 words
ETA: PEARLJAMZ DREW THIS WONDERFULNESS FOR THE STORY. BRB, CANNOT SEE, EYES HAVE BEEN REPLACED WITH HEARTS ♥______♥
Monday
Eames’s tattoos are horrid. That doesn’t stop anyone sitting in the bleachers from openly staring at them.
“He probably got them done illegally,” says Arthur. When he gets no response, he adds, “And chose the design while blindfolded.”
“He probably did get them done illegally,” Ariadne finally agrees, but in an entirely different tone.
Arthur glances around. Ariadne is watching with her mouth slightly open, as is Cobb, but he’s occasionally tearing his eyes away to scrutinize his own body. Mal is watching Cobb with a slight smile. She pokes him on the thigh and says, “The muscular type? You like it, really?”
“I don’t like it, really. I just think it’s admirable.”
Ariadne snorts. Arthur says, “Maybe he’s actually twenty-six, masquerading as a high school student because he couldn’t make it in real life.”
“You spin such wonderful stories, Arthur,” Ariadne says. Now she has her elbow on her knee, chin propped up on her hand, and a glazed look in her eyes.
Cobb is still watching as well, one hand wrapped around his opposite arm. In all honesty, Arthur thinks he knows how Cobb feels; despite having grown almost half a foot since freshman year, Arthur is still thin, can still fit into clothes he wore in middle school. Compared to these sweaty, grunting wrestlers -- well, the expression on Cobb’s face says it all.
At least Cobb plays soccer. Arthur collects Lomography cameras and mostly sits in his room.
A movement out in the center of the gym catches Arthur’s eye -- it’s Yusuf, waving as he rips off his headgear and jogs over to the bleachers. Arthur isn’t sure that what Yusuf does counts as wrestling, per se; it might actually be a strange combination of wrestling, judo, street-fighting, and what looks like reflexes borne from years of getting tackled by his brothers out of nowhere.
“Hey,” Yusuf pants when he comes to stop in front of them. “So, you’re good, right? You’re going to write the story?”
“I’m just covering the match,” Arthur says. “But yeah, I’ll probably come around and ask you guys for some quotes, if that’s okay.”
“Sure, sure. Let me know if you have any questions.” Yusuf flashes a grin before heading into the locker rooms.
“Okay.” Mal stands up and slings her messenger bag over her shoulder. “As much as I hate to leave this beautiful view, I have to get to the library before it closes.”
Cobb stands up as well, and then it’s kind of weird to just have the two of them remaining, so all of them file off of the bleachers and head out. As they walk, Ariadne rubs Arthur’s shoulder, then loops her arm through his.
“Good luck on the article. If you have to keep sitting in on practices, you’ll probably smell like ball sweat by the end of the week,” she says brightly, her hair immediately whipping into Arthur’s face as soon as they step outside.
What Arthur doesn’t mention is that he doesn’t have to sit in on the practices. He’s just supposed to cover the match. It’ll be a blurb on a sidebar, if anything. But he figures that watching the practices will provide him with journalistic integrity or whatever.
Journalistic integrity. Definitely.
*
Tuesday
Arthur has chosen Eames as the focus for his article because they share more than half their classes: Honors English, Ceramics, US History, and PE. During Tuesday’s PE period, Arthur trots over to the opposite sidelines during a time-out, where half of the class is waiting to rotate in to the field hockey game. Eames is standing around with a bunch of people, though none of them are talking to each other.
“Hey. Eames, right?” Arthur asks, panting slightly.
Eames rests his chin on top of his stick. “Yes,” he says. “And you’re Arthur the journalist.”
“Yeah. Listen, do you think I could ask you a few questions later? I’m writing a piece about the match you guys have coming up against St. Dominic’s.”
“Sure. No problem.” And then Eames adds, “Arthur,” which is strange because hardly anybody calls anyone by name, except for teachers.
Arthur blinks. “Thanks,” he says.
Even though no one around Eames seems remotely interested in the conversation, Arthur nods to them anyway before heading back onto the field. He ends up scoring a few goals before the next rotation. He wonders if Eames is watching.
*
Someone says, “Hey,” as Arthur’s pulling on his t-shirt. Of course, in his haste to answer, he gets sort of stuck, fists meeting only fabric instead of the armholes. After struggling for a few seconds, he finally conquers the dumb thing, and it’s only afterward that he realizes Eames had stepped forward and tugged the hem down for him.
“Sorry. Thanks,” Arthur says quickly. “What’s going on?”
“Your tee was trying to eat your head. I just saved your life,” Eames tells him.
Arthur busies himself with grabbing his backpack and shutting the locker. “Yes, thank you. Death by cotton, how embarrassing.”
“I would have volunteered myself for a eulogy, you know. Having shared those last few moments with you,” Eames says. He smiles when Arthur does. “So, hey,” he says suddenly, “when did you want to talk about the match? I’ve got some free time after school, before practice.”
“You know, I really just need a couple quotes from you about how you feel about this season, or maybe even just the match against the Colts,” Arthur hedges as he slings his backpack on. “Five, ten minutes, max. We could even do it before English.”
“It’s alright. I plan on being famous someday, so I might as well get used to long interviews while I can.”
Arthur decides to take the bait. “Oh, really,” he says skeptically. “Famous doing what?”
“Maybe I meant infamous.” Eames grins.
“No offense, but you’re kind of cheesy,” Arthur says.
“Of course you meant some offense by that,” Eames counters. “I’ll grant you the interview anyway.”
Arthur gives up. “Fine. Do you want to meet at the student center? It doesn’t close until 3, which is when your practice starts.”
Eames raises his eyebrows, which Arthur guesses is an affirmative. Then he realizes that they’ve been walking together this entire time, and that Eames is holding the door to D-building open for him.
“3:00 then,” Eames confirms. He walks up the stairs without waiting for an answer, leaving Arthur on the landing behind him.
*
As soon as the bell rings at 2:15, the hallways are awash with students and the frantic hum of end-of-the-day conversations. Everything is punctuated by lockers slamming shut and sneakers squeaking against the floors, almost as if people think they need to be louder to make up for their seven hours of imprisonment.
Arthur gets buoyed out of the building by the crowd before detaching himself and heading over to the student center. Ariadne is a speck in the distance; apparently she’s dragged her sculpture project outside and is standing in front of it with her head tilted. Even from here, Arthur can recognize her dubious posture and sunshine-yellow scarf.
Part of him is expecting Eames not to show up, because everyone he knows is either a flake or perpetually ten minutes late. He’s definitely not anticipating Eames waiting for him, sitting at one of the round tables situated right next to the windows.
“Hey,” Arthur greets as he slings his backpack onto the table.
Eames looks up from doodling what looks like a third-grader’s rendition of someone skateboarding, all heavy graphite and awkwardly shaped hands. “Hello. Ready to write a hard-hitting piece of journalism?”
“I’ll be sure to add this to my portfolio,” Arthur says dryly.
“I’ll try to be completely candid, then.”
“Please don’t. I don’t want to hear anything that you wouldn’t tell your mother.” Arthur gets his Moleskine out and flips it open. He notices Eames watching him. “Not a word about the Moleskine,” he warns.
“Fair enough,” Eames agrees after a pause, although it’s clear that he’s struggling with it.
And then Eames proceeds to launch into his life story, starting from growing up in England and moving when he was in the fifth grade, to his favorite gyro place downtown, to the time he’d gotten in trouble for eating the caramelized sugar they had made in Chemistry, to this gym that supposedly has wall-to-wall trampolines. He talks about movies he’s seen and asks Arthur’s opinion on them (Rambo will always be a classic, they both agree); he talks about noise rock and asks Arthur’s opinion on them (Arthur doesn’t even know what noise rock is); he talks about gyros, again (Arthur’s never been to that place downtown, but Eames assures him it’s heaven in your mouth).
It takes Arthur a while to realize that they’re having an actual conversation. Naturally, this is when there’s a break of silence, where Eames has a lopsided smile on his face and Arthur gets suddenly self-conscious.
“So,” he says belatedly.
Eames brightens. “Oh, wait. How far have you gotten on the English essay?”
“What, for Mrs. Dalloway?” Arthur puts his notebook aside and roots through his backpack, pulling out his blue binder, the one that’s puking up folded handouts and bits of notebook matter. “I think I’ve picked out most of my concrete details, but I haven’t really put anything together yet.”
Eames reaches for the binder, but pauses and asks, “May I?”
Arthur nods, feeling kind of awkward just watching Eames skim over his notes. “What about you?”
Eames waves him off, as if he’s asked a stupid question. “Oh, I haven’t started yet.”
“Nothing?”
“Nope.”
“It’s due on Friday,” Arthur says slowly.
Eames waves him off again. “I’ll come up with something.” He looks up when Arthur snorts. “What? You don’t believe in the power of procrastination?”
“Maybe only in your case. I believe you’re one of those people whose life is great because you don’t give it any other option,” Arthur says, a bit recklessly, but it’s true: Eames, the varsity athlete in honors classes. Eames, whose first name no one knows because nobody would even think to pose such a question to a high school Adonis (not Arthur’s words).
Eames just looks at him. “Come to the match on Friday,” he says abruptly. “You will, right?”
“What? Yes, I have to,” Arthur answers.
“Great. Listen, I have to go now, though,” Eames says, as if it’s an apology. “We’ll talk some more tomorrow though, yeah?”
He grabs his backpack, punches Arthur’s shoulder, and is gone before Arthur has even registered that the clock hanging by the empty lunch line says that it’s 3:05.
Arthur looks down at his notebook and sees the words WRESTLING ARTICLE written at the top right with a box drawn around it, and Eames written below that. That’s it.
“Dammit,” Arthur mutters to himself.
*
Wednesday
The next morning, Arthur wakes up grouchy and bleary-eyed. He’d stayed up way too late the night before, looking at archived copies of The Hawk. All the athlete highlights were about three hundred words, and pretty much all of the articles covering matches were tiny blurbs mentioning the score and maybe a single quote. There is absolutely no reason why Arthur should be thinking about this so much, and he knows it, but that doesn’t do anything to help the fact that he keeps thinking about it.
Breakfast consists of a chunk of Gouda cheese and a few Ritz crackers. He eats it as he glowers his way to school, getting to his locker just in time for the morning rush. Dom's locker is only two sets away, so he heads over there once he's dumped his books.
“Eames is kind of a douchebag,” Arthur complains.
Dom’s reply is muffled by the locker door between them. “Why?”
“He just is.”
“You could get on the debate team with skills like that,” Dom says, and then, “Ow,” when Arthur nudges the locker door so that it swings into his arm. “Seriously, didn’t you just need like, two quotes from him? If any?” he asks, finally shutting his locker and coming into view.
Arthur falls in step beside him as they walk. “I got about a million and a half. None of which has to do with wrestling.”
Dom shrugs. “Maybe he just wanted to talk.”
“But he has his own friends for that.”
“When did you get so exclusive?” Dom laughs. “This asshole front doesn’t really work on you anymore.”
“Since when?” Arthur demands, but without any heart in it.
“Since I’ve known you. Since you tried so hard to affect it,” says Dom. He turns into the Chemistry classroom, then turns back and asks, “Chimichangas for lunch?”
Arthur waves to Mal, who’s sitting down already with her bag on her desk. He would call Cobb a simpleton, but the chimichangas really are delicious. “What else?” he sighs.
*
When Arthur walks in to English, Mrs. Gardiner isn’t there but most of the students are, getting out their things and preparing for Silent Reading. Ariadne, who sits across the room in the back, waves hello; Eames, who sits one row over and two seats ahead of Arthur, has Harry Potter on his desk and is saying, “It’s leviosa, not leviosa,” tipping the chair onto its back legs, soaking it all in, being cocky in the way only a high school boy could be. Being cocky in a way that makes it hard for Arthur to look elsewhere.
“Arthur,” he calls loudly, even though Arthur is about ten feet away.
Arthur looks at him with a blank expression. “Hello, Eames,” is all he says, but Eames smiles at him for a few more seconds anyway. Apparently no one is buying into Arthur’s mood today.
When Eames faces the front of the classroom again, Arthur sits up and cranes his neck to try to catch Ariadne’s eye. She’s already looking at him, though, and makes a crude gesture with a loose fist by her mouth and her tongue poking against her cheek.
Arthur makes a face and stares down at his notebook, drawing and retracing a circle over and over until the ink bleeds through to the other side.
*
As they're filing out of the classroom, Eames catches up with Arthur and asks, “Did you write the article yet?”
“How’s your Dalloway paper going?” Arthur shoots back.
Eames raises his eyebrows. “I took you for many things, but never a grade grubber.”
“I’m just making conversation,” Arthur grumps. “Fine. How’s the season going? Are you going to give me something to work with now?”
“You’re going to be a great journalist someday.” Eames starts walking backwards when Arthur stops at his locker. “Come to practice, maybe you can pick up some things to write about,” he calls.
“Maybe you could just tell me so I can write the article already,” Arthur yells back. Once again, his heart isn’t in it. He stares at the back of his locker, having forgotten why he even opened it in the first place.
*
After elbowing his way through the lunch line with hardly any mercy, Arthur eventually emerges victorious, juggling four chimichangas in his hands. He spies Mal, Dom, and Ariadne sitting at a table, all studying him as he walks toward them.
“What’s going on?” he asks as he passes the food around.
Ariadne takes a chimichanga and does the blowjob mime again with her free hand. She’s really good at it, actually. “That’s disgusting,” Arthur informs her.
“Hey, how’s your sculpture coming along?” Dom cuts in smoothly.
“I hate it,” Ariadne says brightly. “I want to smash it and I’m pretty sure Mr. Daggar wants to smash it too. My portfolio is going to be such crap.”
“Maybe you can turn that in. Smashed abstract art,” Mal suggests. “What’s it made of?”
“Plaster and stone,” Ariadne says. She takes a vicious bite of her chimichanga. Meanwhile, Mal continues to pick hers apart layer by layer, as if she’s practicing for Anatomy dissections.
“Perfect,” she says. “The plaster would create a great dust radius. A write-up would be very easy.”
“Forget my sculpture. Let’s talk about Arthur’s sculpture. And by ‘sculpture’, I mean ‘article’. And by ‘article’, I mean ‘Eames’.”
Arthur takes a calm bite of food and squints out the window, scanning over everyone who’s eating lunch outside. Dom cracks open a soda as loudly as possible.
“Okay, I’m being serious now. What’s so difficult about this assignment?” Ariadne asks.
Arthur shrugs. “I don’t know what to write.”
“You could always talk to someone else on the team.”
Arthur shrugs again.
“Or, okay. Eames is taking Photography this semester, you know. Write about how wrestlers have varied interests and how they aren’t just like The Thing from Fantastic Four,” Ariadne suggests.
Arthur stares out the window some more, then begrudgingly takes out his Moleskine and, under Eames, writes LIKES PHOTOGRAPHY.
“It’s cute, how he’s acting like he doesn’t hear you,” says Cobb. When Arthur grunts, Cobb presses, “Don’t you have to get used to talking to people if you’re going to be a journalist?”
“I can be a newsroom journalist,” Arthur finally points out. “Report from behind a desk. I don’t even have to wear pants.”
“Will Eames be under this desk?” Mal asks.
Arthur shuts the Moleskine and placidly puts it back in his backpack.
*
Thursday
They’re playing field hockey in PE again. Eames, along with the rest of his team, is wearing an orange mesh top over his uniform, like a walking traffic cone.
“You missed practice yesterday,” he pants.
“I had an auction to bid on,” Arthur says. He dribbles the ball and tries to run it past Eames, who jams his stick out and almost trips Arthur in the process.
“On eBay?” Eames presses, as if he hasn’t committed a totally egregious foul. Ironically, Coach Parker is lecturing a small group of people about stick safety, so he’d missed it.
Arthur whacks the ball toward Evans, then comes to a stop and heaves, “Yes, on eBay.”
“Yeah?” Eames curls his hand over the top of his stick, then crosses one foot over the other, toes pressing into the grass in a neat point. He looks like he’s on a golf green instead of playing fake field hockey on a shitty track field. “What did you buy?”
Arthur gives him the side-eye. He looks genuinely interested, though, so he says, “A twin lens reflex camera.”
“Really?”
“It’s just a toy one,” Arthur says hastily.
“Still.” Eames spins his stick around its heel. “Do you have more? Do you use them often?”
“I try. 120 film is too expensive, though.”
“It really is. Heads up,” Eames says suddenly, nudging Arthur with his shoulder as other players start skirting closer to them. He keeps moving backward, pressing against Arthur with each step. The mesh shirt stinks like the bottom of a PE locker, but Arthur can still smell fresh sweat and faint cologne; he might even be able to ID the detergent Eames uses.
“This isn’t basketball,” Arthur complains. His heart is pounding fast. Eames’s cotton shorts keep brushing over Arthur’s bare knees.
“No, it’s field hockey. Far higher stakes.” Suddenly, Eames takes off up the field. “You’ll be glad to know I finished my paper,” he calls over his shoulder, leaving Arthur standing there alone, his hand on his hip, sweaty and with mud-covered socks.
*
Ariadne has to finish her sculpture, Dom and Mal need to do a write-up of the play they saw the week before, and Arthur really isn’t the type to wheedle people into doing things, so he heads to the gym by himself to watch the wrestling practice. As soon as he gets there, he runs into Yusuf, who’s just emerging from the locker room. His shoelaces are still untied.
“Yusuf, hey,” greets Arthur, hurrying to extract his notes.
“Hey. Oh, am I about to be interviewed?” Yusuf touches his chest, as if worrying about the fact that he’s not properly dressed for the occasion.
Arthur snorts. “Yeah, by this world-class journalist. Okay, how do you feel about tomorrow’s match?”
“Well, considering our record so far,” Yusuf starts, but Arthur fumbles his notes and interrupts: “Wait, what’s your record so far?”
“Seriously? Aren’t you supposed to fact-check or something?” Yusuf blinks. “Oh yeah, I forgot: who’d you end up talking to?”
“Come on, I’ve been busy,” Arthur says, evading the last question. “I’m sorry.”
Yusuf breaks into a grin. “It’s okay, I’m just breaking your balls.”
Arthur waves him off, then manages to squeeze in a few questions about their season and the new varsity line-up before he’s called to participate in a practice match.
The bleachers are sparsely occupied by the usual crowd: kids doing homework while waiting for someone to pick them up, some kind of club meeting in the lower corner, several groups of people just sitting and talking. Arthur picks his way to roughly the middle, then starts observing. He tries not to look over at Eames too often; in fact, he’s so focused on it that it takes him a while to notice that the practice seems kind of disorganized. The match to the far right consists of two guys seeing how close they can get to doing the splits. Yusuf is in the middle of the mats, doing some kind of Sumo moves. Eames and his opponent are grappling -- but only because they’re trying to grab the elastic of each other’s uniform and snap it to inflict maximum pain.
Eventually they both give up. Eames hoists himself onto his knees, then looks directly at Arthur, his headgear propped up onto the crown of his head.
“Wow,” Arthur says out loud. He waves timidly, just in case Eames actually isn’t looking at him at all.
Eames waves back, his mouthpiece jutting out like a lemon rind.
*
The truth is that Arthur has been aware of Eames for a while, but he’s interacted with him for only a fraction of that time. They don’t know each other well at all, but the fact that Eames leaves him feeling unbalanced seems par for the course. Arthur should just learn to take it in stride, it seems.
This is the reasoning he uses when, after he’s just started the walk home at the end of the day, a busted beige Corolla pulls up on the sidewalk slightly ahead of him. One of the taillights is out; the majority of the letters are missing, spelling out ‘ROLL’ along the edge of the trunk.
“This is sufficiently creepy,” Arthur says as Eames leers at him through the open passenger window.
“Do you need a ride?” Eames asks, his expression clearing. “It’s getting a bit late.”
Arthur looks up and down the street, as if gauging traffic will determine his answer. “Sure, okay,” he says.
There are empty Powerade bottles rolling around in the passenger-side footwell. A half-full one keeps lurching against Arthur’s foot as they putt away from the curb. His backpack is heavy in his lap, the seatbelt is cutting into his shoulder, and Eames’s forearm is resting on the middle compartment, inches away from Arthur’s elbow.
Eames even has one of those tree-shaped car fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. Arthur reaches out and flicks it, just because. Then he tries to roll the window up by turning the crank on the door.
“That won’t work,” Eames tells him over the chugging guitar music. “There is no window.”
“Oh.” Arthur puts his hands back in his lap. “Okay.”
The smile that Eames gives him seems disproportionate. But, shit, this whole thing, with Eames smiling at him, and the wind coming through the window-less window to make hell out of his hair, and the sun halfway set -- for a few seconds, Arthur allows himself to wish that he had one of his cameras with him.
Then he vows to be detached from it all.
*
He puts in a valiant effort, at least. But in the end, he gets home at ten minutes to 11:00pm, full of vegetarian burritos, his eyes burning from sitting so close to the movie screen, his face hurting from smiling so much.
After receiving a lecture from his mom, Arthur goes up to his room. Everything’s the same as always, with the unmade bed and his computer whirring softly, but for some reason it all seems foreign to him. He puts his backpack down, then spends time straightening the rows of cameras on the shelf above his bed, thinking about Eames’s laugh, and how it comes so low from his throat.
*
Friday
The turnout for the match ends up being pretty depressing. There are more occupants in the visitors’ bleachers than on the home team’s, and most of the latter group are parents. Arthur is glad Ariadne is sitting next to him, even though she’s covered in plaster dust and his nose is getting itchy from all of it.
“This is...actually pretty unattractive,” she comments as they watch a couple sophomores circling the mats. “Like they’re asserting dominance that neither of them have yet.”
“It’s high school wrestling,” says Arthur. “I’m pretty sure it’s awkward most of the time.”
“Eames is pretty dominating though, huh,” Ariadne says, then does some weird, hyuck-ing laugh while knocking her knee against Arthur’s. “Did you talk to him today?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
Arthur doesn’t mention the specifics: how Eames had kept writing him notes in English, holding them in plain view of Mrs. Gardiner until Arthur was forced to snatch them out of his hand if he didn’t want to get in trouble.
But Arthur kept writing back anyway, so he can’t really blame the whole thing on Eames.
“He’s pretty cool,” Arthur adds, scanning the floor of the gym in what he knows is a horrible attempt at being casual.
Surprisingly, all Ariadne says is, “I’m sure he is,” before wolf-whistling at the sophomores, who still haven’t done anything exciting. “Get a move on, boys,” she calls. Arthur shushes her but laughs all the same.
After the match, Ariadne catches a ride home with Yusuf, leaving Arthur alone in his indecision. He makes about eight false starts to leave before doubling back to the gym again. Then he finally steels himself and waits outside the locker room, because he doesn’t really have anything to lose at this point.
When Eames emerges, showered and changed, Arthur pushes off the wall and stands up straight.
“That was terrible,” Arthur tells him, but he can’t stop smiling.
“You’re laughing at me,” Eames accuses.
“With. With you,” Arthur corrects. “It looks like you had fun, though.”
“Sure, getting my dignity squashed against old wrestling mats covered in pubic hair,” Eames says. “Yes, that was a good time.” Then he tilts his head and winces. “Can you do me a favor and check my ear? I’m thinking it might be cauliflower ear.”
“What,” Arthur says, but he does it anyway, spidering his fingers carefully over the shell of Eames’s ear, then shifting so that his hand is half-buried in sweat-damp hair. He says, “I don’t see anything,” but swipes his thumb over the curve of the helix, just in case.
“Great, let’s go then.” Eames pulls away abruptly and starts walking toward the parking lot, leaving Arthur with the creeping realization that he might have just gotten duped.
He wipes his hand on his pants and has to jog to catch up. “Can you give me a ride home?” he calls, and by the time he gets to the car, Eames has already left the passenger-side door hanging open.
“Get in, this thing turns into a pumpkin after midnight,” Eames says as he turns the engine over; at the same time, Arthur says, “I have some Netflix movies at my house if you -- ”
“What?” says Eames.
Arthur scratches his neck. “What? I mean, I have Rambo at my house, if you want to watch it. We were talking about it that one time and I realized I hadn’t seen it in a while, so.”
“The first one?”
“Of course the first one,” Arthur says, offended.
As Eames drives out of the parking lot, he says, “This is why I like you,” and Arthur tries not to read too much into it.
*
Turns out Eames hadn’t been lying when he said that he had most of the movie memorized. He recites almost half of Stallone’s lines while eating pretzels from the enormous bag propped up between them. All the lights are off, save for the glow of the TV -- like it's highlighting how fragile this situation seems, how it could be interpreted as almost fraught with potential, or completely innocuous.
After the movie is over, Arthur gets up from the couch and pads across the room to turn on the hallway light. Some of the mood dissipates under the 70-watt bulb, but Eames looks at him, eyes dark in the shadows of the living room, and asks, “Could you show me your cameras? Would that be okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” Arthur finds himself saying, but it takes a minute for his body to get in sync with his words. Finally, he starts leading the way up the stairs, kicking his backpack to the side once they step in to his room.
“Of course,” Eames says to himself, touching Arthur’s whiteboard.
“Shut up,” Arthur says.
Eames makes an even louder noise of discovery. “Of course, of course,” he muses, touching random things now: hangers on the door handle, the dark grey bedspread, a t-shirt slung over the back of the desk chair, but he drops the act when he sees the cameras.
“Feel free,” says Arthur, and stands around while Eames kneels on his bed, poking through the shelves and scrutinizing each one carefully. There’s a lamp on the edge of the bottom shelf, which Eames flicks on; he lets out a short laugh when he sees that the lampshade is lined with 35mm film, lit up in shades of green and brown.
“This is brilliant,” he says, running an index finger over the film sprockets.
When Arthur remains silent, Eames cranes his neck to look over his shoulder. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Arthur says automatically, but Eames keeps studying him, so he finally says, “Just -- this sounds like the last line of some cheesy teen movie, but. You’re a lot more three-dimensional than I thought you were.”
“Don’t act like you weren’t disappointed I didn’t fit into the jock stereotype,” Eames says easily.
“Not disappointed, per se.” Arthur sits down on the edge of the bed, one leg bent up onto the mattress. “Just -- unbalanced.”
Eames shrugs. “You never really know anyone.”
“You’re right,” Arthur says quietly.
The silence seems to be pressing in all around them. “Except me,” Arthur adds, trying to steer them away from the unnamable silence. “I’m pretty much exactly how you’d expect.”
“Yes, you do have the air of someone who should be wearing horn-rimmed glasses, sitting on their fire escape in Brooklyn, reading books of short stories and smoking Pall Malls,” Eames says in an affected voice. He sits down cross-legged, bouncing on the springs of the mattress a little. “Stop waiting for me to contradict you. You know you’re more than that, you don’t need anyone to validate you.”
Eames is so candid and calm for a high schooler, it makes Arthur’s heart race just to think about it. “Maybe you should become a therapist instead of whatever infamous career criminal you’re planning to be,” he says after an eternity of picking Eames’s words apart in his head. “I’m sure there’s a business in it for you.”
“Do you feel more free, like the world is in Technicolor?” Eames grins. He’s sitting very close, now. “I did enjoy this little jaunt of helping you find yourself.”
Arthur looks out the window and wonders what time it is. Pretty late, judging by the dew on the window and how it blurs the view of the streetlights. “You seriously cannot be this laid back about everything,” he breathes.
“I’m not,” Eames says after a pause. “I’m not, but does it really matter? Arthur.”
When Eames says his name, Arthur immediately turns his head and is wholly unprepared for Eames kissing him. Dry, quick, lasting as long as the lilting pause at the peak of a sigh, but a kiss all the same.
As soon as Eames pulls away, his presence is taken over by the bright flash of a camera, maybe the only thing more blindingly intense than Eames’s wide grin. It leaves sunspots dancing in Arthur’s vision when he closes his eyes -- he squeezes them shut, hard, and listens to Eames rewind the film, clack-clack-clack.
“Your conversations are much too serious for a sixteen year old,” Eames says absently. Then, “Arthur. Open your eyes,” and Arthur can practically hear him smiling.
WRESTLING
The Hawks had a tough fight against the Colts of St. Dominic’s last Friday. Their 0-8 season has been filled with many close calls and heartbreaking losses. Going head-to-head with the Colts proved to be another stumble, with the Hawks ceding all matches in thirty short minutes.
“You win some, you lose some. Isn’t that how the saying goes?” said Eames, who refused to give his first name. This was his second match as a varsity wrestler, and he lost by technical fall, which is a point gap of fifteen. He hopes to perform better next Friday at the match against the Longhorns.