I'd Rather Live in Dreams (Part 18/18) :D
Title: I'd Rather Live in Dreams (Part 18/18)
Characters/Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2300
Notes: YEAH!! THAT'S RIGHT!! TAKE THAT, STORY! YOU DON'T OWN ME! I DO WHAT I WANT!! You guys, it is COMPLETE.
... sort of. I'm going to clean it up quite a bit and maybe re-write a couple scenes and then post it as a whole big thing on AO3.
Thank you to anyone who took the time to read this story even though I was soooo slooooow to update. And thank you especially to any lovelies who took the time to comment. <3 Also, if you want to leave me any concrit, go right ahead. I am always looking for ways to improve my writing.
Arthur suffers from a strong and sudden fit a couple days later when he double checks his flight itinerary and realizes that he leaves Mexico City for Los Angeles twenty four hours earlier than he thought he did.
“Fuck!” he screams and throws his hand, the back of it smacking into the mug next to his laptop. It crashes to the floorboards and shatters, black coffee seeping into the cracks between the wood.
Eames bolts inside from the balcony. “Arthur? What’s happened?”
Arthur presses the heels of his hands into his eyeballs. “My flight leaves a day earlier than I thought it did.”
Eames comes up behind him and presses his hips into the back of Arthur’s chair, curves his palms around Arthur’s shoulders. “So you’re leaving before me?”
“Yeah. Not by much. A few hours. But... yeah.”
“That’s all right, love. We still have three full days together.” He forces a smile and nudges it against the shell of Arthur’s ear. “Besides, I have always enjoyed watching your backside when you walk away.”
Arthur pulls his chair forward abruptly causing Eames to stumble.
“You think this is funny,” Arthur intones, his voice dangerously quiet.
“Arthur, that’s not fair.” Eames stands up straight, takes a couple steps back from Arthur’s chair. “You know-” Eames takes a deep breath, swallows in order to clear his throat and give himself a moment to clear his head. “You know this isn’t easy for me. You know that. But what do you want me to do? Spend the next three days skulking about the apartment? There’s nothing we can do about this, Arthur. Should I spend the last bit of time we have together reminding you of that? Because to be perfectly honest, I’d rather not think about it.”
Arthur pulls his head up from where it’s been resting in his hands and inhales deeply. “I know. I know... I don’t want to think about it either.” He reaches back, seeking Eames’ hand.
Eames steps forward and interlocks their fingers, brings Arthur’s hand to his mouth to kiss his knuckles.
~
The remaining seventy four hours that they have together begin to disappear.
They speak less and think about everything more than they need to. Touch each other more and for longer. Reach for each other in the middle of the night.
Arthur says, “I want to go to the Galapagos.”
“When?” Eames asks him.
Arthur shrugs. “Whenever. After I go see Dom and Mal in L.A., I need to go visit Massoud. Maybe after that-”
Eames shakes his head. “I’m not sure that I’ll be able to. I’ve got a job lined up for a month from now.”
“Doing what?”
A deep line forms between Eames’ brows. “It’s safer that you don’t know.”
Arthur doesn’t say anything in response, so Eames pulls him closer and says, “I promise, sometime in the next year, we will go to the Galapagos.”
He doesn’t say If you still care for me then. If you haven’t grown to hate me after several weeks of not knowing whether I’m alive or dead.
He doesn’t have to say these things out loud. From here on out, these will be constants in their relationship. The foundation on which it will stand or sink.
~
Eames comes back to the apartment the evening before Arthur is due to fly out, carrying a paper bag filled with condoms and cigarettes. He doesn’t see Arthur in the main room or the bedroom, so he pokes his head into the bathroom.
Arthur is seated in a chair in front of the sink, staring himself down in the mirror. There’s a towel draped over his shoulders and pair of scissors in his right hand. The curls that once lay across the back of his neck are gone. They lie on the floor at Arthur’s feet, bunched together in little black nests.
Eames watches speechless as Arthur grabs a fistful of hair and begins to chop it off, scissor blades almost touching his scalp.
Eames waits until he’s finished cutting to murmur, “Arthur?”
The hand holding the scissors drops down into Arthur’s lap. He sighs, opens his mouth to speak and then closes it again. He looks up and at Eames via the mirror. “I just wanted to get it over with. I’m sorry. I...” He looks down at his hands. “I’m fucking this up, aren’t I?”
Eames knows that Arthur isn’t talking about his haircut, and neither is he when he says. “No, you’re not.” Eames drops the paper bag on the floor and walks into the bathroom, reaches down to take the scissors from Arthur’s hands. “Here. Let me help you.”
He places his hands on either side of Arthur’s head, pulls it back gently and meets Arthur’s eyes in the mirror. “We’re going to cut it with the razor once we get rid of the excess, yeah?”
“Yeah...”
“All right.” Eames combs his fingers gently through Arthur’s curls, pulls up a few strands through his fingers and snips them off.
Arthur closes his eyes with a heavy sigh and slides down in the chair a bit, allows himself to relax in Eames’ hands.
Once all the longer strands are cut off, Eames picks up Arthur’s electric razor from the vanity. He curls his palm over the crown of Arthur’s head and tilts it to the side. He flicks the razor on and runs it slow and steady across Arthur’s scalp, sliding it from his temple over the soft skin behind his ear to the nape of his neck. Once he’s finished he leans forward and gently blows several errant shavings off the tip of Arthur’s ear.
Arthur smiles and shivers, and the towel around his neck slips down until it’s covering the back of the chair more than it is his shoulders.
Eames works his way across Arthur’s scalp, running his palm, heavy and warm over every newly-shaved spot. Once he’s finished, he pulls the towel off of Arthur’s shoulders with a flourish and shakes it out as Arthur regards himself in the mirror.
Eames expected Arthur to look younger, but the lack of hair on his head has brought out the indents in his features. The grooves around his mouth have become more prominent in the last three years, and the lines at the corners of his eyes will become wrinkles sooner than later.
Warmth curls around Eames’ heart, and he leans forward and kisses the short, prickly hairs on the crown of Arthur’s skull.
Arthur leans back into Eames’ chest. “Fresh meat,” he sighs, referring to his first week in boot camp.
“It’s not that short.” Eames presses kisses down Arthur’s scalp to his ear.
“No. It’s not.” Arthur turns his head left and right. “It’s just long enough that I look like a recent Police Academy graduate.” He frowns. “Fuck.”
Eames chuckles and stands back from Arthur’s chair. He begins to pluck the buttons of his shirt apart. “I suppose it’s only fair that I put myself through the same.” He peels his shirt off his shoulders and kicks the leg of the chair. “Up you get. There’s not room on that for the both us.”
Arthur blinks at him through the mirror. “Why... what?”
“It’s my turn next.” Eames grabs Arthur’s shoulders and pulls him up, takes the razor from the vanity and places it in his hands. He sits and threads the towel over his shoulders. “Don’t worry. It won’t take long. I have considerably less hair than you have. Or had, rather.”
Arthur looks down at the razor in his hands and then back up at Eames. “You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Go on,” Eames insists, rolling his shoulders.
Arthur smiles and flicks on the razor.
His movements are slow and precise. After every pass of the razor over Eames’ scalp, he takes a step back and considers his work for a few seconds before moving back in. Eames would be frustrated with his slow progress except that, when Arthur concentrates, his lips curl down in a lovely little moue.
“All right,” Arthur declares once he’s finished. He slips the towel off of Eames’ shoulders and uses it to dust the hair off of his neck and out from behind his ears.
Eames stands up rotates his head, looks himself up and down in the mirror. He looks like a bit of a tough. And when he’s sporting some of his nicer clothes, he’ll look like a gentleman who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. He grins at his reflection. “I like it.”
Behind him, Arthur shakes his head ruefully before stepping forward to press his chest to Eames’ back. He growls in Eames’ ear, “Only you could make a five-dollar haircut look good.” He smacks Eames lightly on the ass. “C’mon. Let’s take a shower.”
~
On the morning that he and Arthur fly out, Eames wakes up to a warm hand stroking his scalp. He moans and reaches across the mattress, surprised when his arms wrap around fabric instead of skin. He cracks on eye open and looks up to see Arthur gazing down at him, his eyes soft and sad. “Hey,” Arthur croaks.
Eames leans up and presses a gentle kiss to his lips. “Hey. When do you have to leave?”
“Couple hours. It’s ten right now, and my flight’s at three.”
Eames hums in acknowledgement and nuzzles his face into Arthur’s chest, starched cotton over warm skin. The sharp scent of dry-cleaning chemicals is oddly comforting, a smell as distinctly Arthur as the heady musk that makes Eames groan when he dips his head between Arthur’s thighs.
Eames doesn’t ask Arthur why he went through his morning routine without waking him up. He knows why. It’s the same reason that Arthur started cutting his hair the other day while Eames was at the store: Arthur doesn’t want to drag this out. Their last couple hours together will be easier if they don’t try and weigh down every moment with significance.
Eames closes his eyes and listens to the quiet whistle of Arthur’s breath through his nose and the muffled thump of his heartbeat. It’s strong and steady, and it anchors Eames to the moment.
Eames never believed that there was room enough in his heart for this. Never thought there was space in between the guilt and the fear to harbor what he feels for Arthur. But it’s there. A bright spot that beats and expands in a place inside his self that he can’t quite pinpoint. Right where they always told him his soul should be.
“What are you thinking about?” Arthur’s voice cuts into his thoughts.
Eames snickers. “Nothing. Just something silly and romantic. What about you?”
Arthur shifts underneath him. “How much do you know about different philosophies of time?”
A chuckle forms deep in Eames’ chest, and then it morphs into a full-blown barking laugh when it comes out of his mouth. “Trust you to be thinking about special relativity at a time like this.”
Arthur smiles but only for a brief moment. “I’m serious, Eames.” He runs a hand through his hair and then drops it when he remembers that it’s no longer there. “Time passes. That’s the only thing that physicists know for sure. And no two people experience one event in exactly the same way-”
“Arthur-” Eames lifts his head up as Arthur’s heart begins to beat faster underneath him.
“And our memories distort everything. So what’s gonna happen to these past few weeks? What are our memories gonna do to them? Especially if we don’t-”
“Arthur,” Eames says firmly and presses his palm into the center of Arthur’s chest. “It doesn’t matter what our memories do to this. You can’t change the fact that it happened. You don’t wield that sort of power over time.” Eames hoists himself up to sitting and looks into Arthur’s eyes when he says, “And you certainly don’t get to claim ownership of it. This time that we had together is ours, yours and mine. You don’t get to keep it for yourself.”
Eames watches as something inside of Arthur cracks open. The lines around his eyes disappear, and his mouth stretches out into a dazzling smile. He surges forward and kisses Eames, long and deep.
At some point Arthur’s phone rings. It’s Isaac. He’s waiting outside to take Arthur to the airport.
They untangle themselves slowly, pressing lingering kisses to each other’s lips as they separate.
Arthur gets up and gathers his things, and Eames tries to follow him. Arthur presses him back down with a firm hand on his sternum. “No,” he says gently. “Stay in bed.” He smiles. “Besides, didn’t you say that you like to watch my ass when I walk away?”
Eames resists for a moment, and then he scoots back up the bed and sits against the headboard. He watches as Arthur picks up his suitcase and pulls the strap of his laptop case onto his shoulder. He walks to the doorway and turns to face Eames. “I love you.”
Eames finds himself smiling. He wants to despite the fact that his heart is constricting painfully in his chest. “I love you too,” he murmurs.
Arthur begins to walk backwards out of the doorway. “I’ll see you in a few months. The Galapagos. Don’t forget.”
Eames shakes his head, “Of course I won’t, you arsehole.”
Arthur nods and turns. He throws a coy smile back over his shoulder as he walks away, canting his hips pointedly.
Eames chuckles as Arthur disappears around the corner. The front door clicks open and shut.
Eames stays seated against the headboard as the sun climbs higher in the sky and the shadows in the room disappear. He watches the dust motes float in the sun coming in through the window. Sometime later, he realizes that he forgot to tell Arthur the one thing that he really wanted to. But Arthur’s gone, so he says it out loud to the empty room.
“Thank you.”
Characters/Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2300
Notes: YEAH!! THAT'S RIGHT!! TAKE THAT, STORY! YOU DON'T OWN ME! I DO WHAT I WANT!! You guys, it is COMPLETE.
... sort of. I'm going to clean it up quite a bit and maybe re-write a couple scenes and then post it as a whole big thing on AO3.
Thank you to anyone who took the time to read this story even though I was soooo slooooow to update. And thank you especially to any lovelies who took the time to comment. <3 Also, if you want to leave me any concrit, go right ahead. I am always looking for ways to improve my writing.
Arthur suffers from a strong and sudden fit a couple days later when he double checks his flight itinerary and realizes that he leaves Mexico City for Los Angeles twenty four hours earlier than he thought he did.
“Fuck!” he screams and throws his hand, the back of it smacking into the mug next to his laptop. It crashes to the floorboards and shatters, black coffee seeping into the cracks between the wood.
Eames bolts inside from the balcony. “Arthur? What’s happened?”
Arthur presses the heels of his hands into his eyeballs. “My flight leaves a day earlier than I thought it did.”
Eames comes up behind him and presses his hips into the back of Arthur’s chair, curves his palms around Arthur’s shoulders. “So you’re leaving before me?”
“Yeah. Not by much. A few hours. But... yeah.”
“That’s all right, love. We still have three full days together.” He forces a smile and nudges it against the shell of Arthur’s ear. “Besides, I have always enjoyed watching your backside when you walk away.”
Arthur pulls his chair forward abruptly causing Eames to stumble.
“You think this is funny,” Arthur intones, his voice dangerously quiet.
“Arthur, that’s not fair.” Eames stands up straight, takes a couple steps back from Arthur’s chair. “You know-” Eames takes a deep breath, swallows in order to clear his throat and give himself a moment to clear his head. “You know this isn’t easy for me. You know that. But what do you want me to do? Spend the next three days skulking about the apartment? There’s nothing we can do about this, Arthur. Should I spend the last bit of time we have together reminding you of that? Because to be perfectly honest, I’d rather not think about it.”
Arthur pulls his head up from where it’s been resting in his hands and inhales deeply. “I know. I know... I don’t want to think about it either.” He reaches back, seeking Eames’ hand.
Eames steps forward and interlocks their fingers, brings Arthur’s hand to his mouth to kiss his knuckles.
~
The remaining seventy four hours that they have together begin to disappear.
They speak less and think about everything more than they need to. Touch each other more and for longer. Reach for each other in the middle of the night.
Arthur says, “I want to go to the Galapagos.”
“When?” Eames asks him.
Arthur shrugs. “Whenever. After I go see Dom and Mal in L.A., I need to go visit Massoud. Maybe after that-”
Eames shakes his head. “I’m not sure that I’ll be able to. I’ve got a job lined up for a month from now.”
“Doing what?”
A deep line forms between Eames’ brows. “It’s safer that you don’t know.”
Arthur doesn’t say anything in response, so Eames pulls him closer and says, “I promise, sometime in the next year, we will go to the Galapagos.”
He doesn’t say If you still care for me then. If you haven’t grown to hate me after several weeks of not knowing whether I’m alive or dead.
He doesn’t have to say these things out loud. From here on out, these will be constants in their relationship. The foundation on which it will stand or sink.
~
Eames comes back to the apartment the evening before Arthur is due to fly out, carrying a paper bag filled with condoms and cigarettes. He doesn’t see Arthur in the main room or the bedroom, so he pokes his head into the bathroom.
Arthur is seated in a chair in front of the sink, staring himself down in the mirror. There’s a towel draped over his shoulders and pair of scissors in his right hand. The curls that once lay across the back of his neck are gone. They lie on the floor at Arthur’s feet, bunched together in little black nests.
Eames watches speechless as Arthur grabs a fistful of hair and begins to chop it off, scissor blades almost touching his scalp.
Eames waits until he’s finished cutting to murmur, “Arthur?”
The hand holding the scissors drops down into Arthur’s lap. He sighs, opens his mouth to speak and then closes it again. He looks up and at Eames via the mirror. “I just wanted to get it over with. I’m sorry. I...” He looks down at his hands. “I’m fucking this up, aren’t I?”
Eames knows that Arthur isn’t talking about his haircut, and neither is he when he says. “No, you’re not.” Eames drops the paper bag on the floor and walks into the bathroom, reaches down to take the scissors from Arthur’s hands. “Here. Let me help you.”
He places his hands on either side of Arthur’s head, pulls it back gently and meets Arthur’s eyes in the mirror. “We’re going to cut it with the razor once we get rid of the excess, yeah?”
“Yeah...”
“All right.” Eames combs his fingers gently through Arthur’s curls, pulls up a few strands through his fingers and snips them off.
Arthur closes his eyes with a heavy sigh and slides down in the chair a bit, allows himself to relax in Eames’ hands.
Once all the longer strands are cut off, Eames picks up Arthur’s electric razor from the vanity. He curls his palm over the crown of Arthur’s head and tilts it to the side. He flicks the razor on and runs it slow and steady across Arthur’s scalp, sliding it from his temple over the soft skin behind his ear to the nape of his neck. Once he’s finished he leans forward and gently blows several errant shavings off the tip of Arthur’s ear.
Arthur smiles and shivers, and the towel around his neck slips down until it’s covering the back of the chair more than it is his shoulders.
Eames works his way across Arthur’s scalp, running his palm, heavy and warm over every newly-shaved spot. Once he’s finished, he pulls the towel off of Arthur’s shoulders with a flourish and shakes it out as Arthur regards himself in the mirror.
Eames expected Arthur to look younger, but the lack of hair on his head has brought out the indents in his features. The grooves around his mouth have become more prominent in the last three years, and the lines at the corners of his eyes will become wrinkles sooner than later.
Warmth curls around Eames’ heart, and he leans forward and kisses the short, prickly hairs on the crown of Arthur’s skull.
Arthur leans back into Eames’ chest. “Fresh meat,” he sighs, referring to his first week in boot camp.
“It’s not that short.” Eames presses kisses down Arthur’s scalp to his ear.
“No. It’s not.” Arthur turns his head left and right. “It’s just long enough that I look like a recent Police Academy graduate.” He frowns. “Fuck.”
Eames chuckles and stands back from Arthur’s chair. He begins to pluck the buttons of his shirt apart. “I suppose it’s only fair that I put myself through the same.” He peels his shirt off his shoulders and kicks the leg of the chair. “Up you get. There’s not room on that for the both us.”
Arthur blinks at him through the mirror. “Why... what?”
“It’s my turn next.” Eames grabs Arthur’s shoulders and pulls him up, takes the razor from the vanity and places it in his hands. He sits and threads the towel over his shoulders. “Don’t worry. It won’t take long. I have considerably less hair than you have. Or had, rather.”
Arthur looks down at the razor in his hands and then back up at Eames. “You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Go on,” Eames insists, rolling his shoulders.
Arthur smiles and flicks on the razor.
His movements are slow and precise. After every pass of the razor over Eames’ scalp, he takes a step back and considers his work for a few seconds before moving back in. Eames would be frustrated with his slow progress except that, when Arthur concentrates, his lips curl down in a lovely little moue.
“All right,” Arthur declares once he’s finished. He slips the towel off of Eames’ shoulders and uses it to dust the hair off of his neck and out from behind his ears.
Eames stands up rotates his head, looks himself up and down in the mirror. He looks like a bit of a tough. And when he’s sporting some of his nicer clothes, he’ll look like a gentleman who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. He grins at his reflection. “I like it.”
Behind him, Arthur shakes his head ruefully before stepping forward to press his chest to Eames’ back. He growls in Eames’ ear, “Only you could make a five-dollar haircut look good.” He smacks Eames lightly on the ass. “C’mon. Let’s take a shower.”
~
On the morning that he and Arthur fly out, Eames wakes up to a warm hand stroking his scalp. He moans and reaches across the mattress, surprised when his arms wrap around fabric instead of skin. He cracks on eye open and looks up to see Arthur gazing down at him, his eyes soft and sad. “Hey,” Arthur croaks.
Eames leans up and presses a gentle kiss to his lips. “Hey. When do you have to leave?”
“Couple hours. It’s ten right now, and my flight’s at three.”
Eames hums in acknowledgement and nuzzles his face into Arthur’s chest, starched cotton over warm skin. The sharp scent of dry-cleaning chemicals is oddly comforting, a smell as distinctly Arthur as the heady musk that makes Eames groan when he dips his head between Arthur’s thighs.
Eames doesn’t ask Arthur why he went through his morning routine without waking him up. He knows why. It’s the same reason that Arthur started cutting his hair the other day while Eames was at the store: Arthur doesn’t want to drag this out. Their last couple hours together will be easier if they don’t try and weigh down every moment with significance.
Eames closes his eyes and listens to the quiet whistle of Arthur’s breath through his nose and the muffled thump of his heartbeat. It’s strong and steady, and it anchors Eames to the moment.
Eames never believed that there was room enough in his heart for this. Never thought there was space in between the guilt and the fear to harbor what he feels for Arthur. But it’s there. A bright spot that beats and expands in a place inside his self that he can’t quite pinpoint. Right where they always told him his soul should be.
“What are you thinking about?” Arthur’s voice cuts into his thoughts.
Eames snickers. “Nothing. Just something silly and romantic. What about you?”
Arthur shifts underneath him. “How much do you know about different philosophies of time?”
A chuckle forms deep in Eames’ chest, and then it morphs into a full-blown barking laugh when it comes out of his mouth. “Trust you to be thinking about special relativity at a time like this.”
Arthur smiles but only for a brief moment. “I’m serious, Eames.” He runs a hand through his hair and then drops it when he remembers that it’s no longer there. “Time passes. That’s the only thing that physicists know for sure. And no two people experience one event in exactly the same way-”
“Arthur-” Eames lifts his head up as Arthur’s heart begins to beat faster underneath him.
“And our memories distort everything. So what’s gonna happen to these past few weeks? What are our memories gonna do to them? Especially if we don’t-”
“Arthur,” Eames says firmly and presses his palm into the center of Arthur’s chest. “It doesn’t matter what our memories do to this. You can’t change the fact that it happened. You don’t wield that sort of power over time.” Eames hoists himself up to sitting and looks into Arthur’s eyes when he says, “And you certainly don’t get to claim ownership of it. This time that we had together is ours, yours and mine. You don’t get to keep it for yourself.”
Eames watches as something inside of Arthur cracks open. The lines around his eyes disappear, and his mouth stretches out into a dazzling smile. He surges forward and kisses Eames, long and deep.
At some point Arthur’s phone rings. It’s Isaac. He’s waiting outside to take Arthur to the airport.
They untangle themselves slowly, pressing lingering kisses to each other’s lips as they separate.
Arthur gets up and gathers his things, and Eames tries to follow him. Arthur presses him back down with a firm hand on his sternum. “No,” he says gently. “Stay in bed.” He smiles. “Besides, didn’t you say that you like to watch my ass when I walk away?”
Eames resists for a moment, and then he scoots back up the bed and sits against the headboard. He watches as Arthur picks up his suitcase and pulls the strap of his laptop case onto his shoulder. He walks to the doorway and turns to face Eames. “I love you.”
Eames finds himself smiling. He wants to despite the fact that his heart is constricting painfully in his chest. “I love you too,” he murmurs.
Arthur begins to walk backwards out of the doorway. “I’ll see you in a few months. The Galapagos. Don’t forget.”
Eames shakes his head, “Of course I won’t, you arsehole.”
Arthur nods and turns. He throws a coy smile back over his shoulder as he walks away, canting his hips pointedly.
Eames chuckles as Arthur disappears around the corner. The front door clicks open and shut.
Eames stays seated against the headboard as the sun climbs higher in the sky and the shadows in the room disappear. He watches the dust motes float in the sun coming in through the window. Sometime later, he realizes that he forgot to tell Arthur the one thing that he really wanted to. But Arthur’s gone, so he says it out loud to the empty room.
“Thank you.”