secretly a reef rat: part I
secretly a reef rat: part I
by templemarker
part I | part II | part III | masterpost | notes
***
They were working a simple bait-and-extract, pulling corporate espionage on one company and feeding it to a competitor, when Arthur got a phone call.
This was notable only in that it was directed to Arthur's personal line, which, in Eames' vast experience monitoring the intricacies of Arthur's working habits, had never once rung whilst during business hours. Whenever those happened to be.
In fact, Eames had long suspected that Arthur's "personal phone" was secretly an excuse for him to fuck off for a smoke break and destroy some smug porcine smiles with some equally vicious birds. And so he watched with bright-eyed interest as Arthur slipped the device from his pocket and stared at the screen in what appeared to be surprised consternation.
"Excuse me," he said to the room, "I need to take this."
Neither Maude (the chemist) nor Paolo (the architect) looked up from their workspaces. Eames waited a beat, and then quietly followed Arthur out into the back garden of the empty, newly built home they were working out of for job prep.
"--what do you mean, you're in the hospital?" Arthur hissed, his voice sounding unusually high-pitched. "Steve, I swear to god, I thought you said when you were taking this task force job that you'd be less prone to calling me with stories of your near-death experiences!"
Eames couldn't hear the reply from this distance, but Arthur's face grew more pinched and he rested his head against the decorative arbor covered delightfully with ornamental ivy. To date, Eames thought only he put such displeasure on Arthur's lovely visage, but apparently he was incorrect. He had competition.
"What did Danny say?" Arthur asked abruptly, clearly cutting off this Steve person in the middle of a sentence. "No, I don't care that--Steve! Steve! What did Danny say?" Arthur nearly shouted into the receiver of his mobile, ears going slightly pink at the tips.
Dear god, Eames thought, how strange to watch this when it's not directed towards him.
"If Danny says the doctor thinks you should stay in the hospital for the week, you better fucking keep your ass in that bed or I'm buying Mary a first class ticket from the mainland tonight," Arthur positively growled, and that seemed to quiet the man on the other side of the line.
Arthur blew out a breath. One rogue strand of hair had fallen from its otherwise perfect swell, and it danced slightly in the air as Arthur expressed his frustration.
"I'm coming out," he said, and his face had turned from irritation to determination. Not even Cobb could turn Arthur's mind when he set a decision like so; Eames had never even bothered to try, knowing it futile from the first moment he saw the tilt of Arthur's chin. "No. Don't even. You're an asshole, a dangerous, risk-taking asshole, but you're my brother, and Danny will need some help keeping you in bed."
There's some further back-and-forth, but Eames had heard all he needed to and more besides. He wandered into the kitchen, black-on-black marble and tile shining a bit with the late afternoon sun, and put the kettle on. He went through the motions of preparing a cuppa, and after a moment's hesitation pulled a second mug from the dish drainer. He watched the light of the kettle and listened for Arthur's re-entry.
Arthur stepped into the kitchen, put together with no hair out of place, looking as though he hadn't just gotten into a familial screaming match outside where their non-existent neighbors couldn't hear.
"I need to take a couple of days off," he said. "We may have to put the job back by a week, to meet that secondary opening in the mark's schedule, but it shouldn't affect the schedule too dramatically. Maude wanted more time with the quick-release Somnacin compound anyway."
Eames didn't say anything, just poured water at the boil over the tea, stirring in a bit of sugar for Arthur and a bit of cream for himself. Wordlessly he handed Arthur his mug; to his credit, Arthur took it without criticism.
In fact, Arthur was watching him with an odd look on his face, which is when Eames realized it was probably strange that he hadn't replied to Arthur's dispassionate accounting of things.
"It's a family matter," Arthur said finally, taking a sip of his tea. "Usually it's a non-issue, but I'm afraid I can't set this one aside."
That's the crux of it, isn't it? Eames had always assumed that Arthur simply didn't have family, that he had lost it or walked away from it or somehow sprung fully formed into the driven, focused man Eames had worked with and occasionally fucked about with for so many years now. But now it was as though some curtain had been opened, revealed a new and interesting bit of Arthur that Eames had never seen before and thus was so bloody fascinating.
"I'd like to come with you," Eames said, and he was as surprised to have said it as Arthur was to have heard it.
"I--what?" Arthur asked, and his confusion was entirely justified; because while they've been more or less on and off and then on again for more time than Eames was perhaps comfortable with, they'd never been particularly keen on things such as emotions or personal histories or even a birthday e-card.
But Eames didn't doubt for a moment that Arthur could rattle off Eames' birthday as though it was his own, and there had always been the hint that there might be something more at play here than some truly stellar sex.
They had ignored it, until now, until Eames' curiosity and his rather too-quick mouth.
"I'd like to go with you," he said, meeting Arthur's eyes. "I'd like to meet your brother."
Arthur swallowed, looking as though he was going to deny, deny, deny that he was anything other than a demigod borne from some deity's thigh, but instead says, "Okay."
Eames raised an eyebrow. "Really, darling? I somehow expected more of a protest."
Arthur took another sip of his tea, licking at his lip to catch a stray drop. "Well, we'll see how you feel about pineapple on your pizza," he says, walking back towards the main room. "I'll book two seats for Honolulu tonight."
"Hawaii?" Eames said dumbly, still stirring the teaspoon in his mug. "You mean to say you're from Hawaii?"
***
Maude and Paolo barely noticed as they left the uniformly homogenous residence they were working out of in upstate New York, both too engrossed in their work to care much for what the extractors were doing. Arthur favored bringing them in because they required so little management; Eames because he couldn't think of anyone else who could carve out four weeks for the gig. They had worked together more than once and Arthur, of course, was right--they didn't require much beyond parameters and materials to get the job done.
They drove in Arthur's rented Accord to Albany, where Arthur had booked them on a thirteen-hour flight from Albany to Honolulu. Eames hadn't even known you could get direct flights from this corner of the world to the other, and hadn't quite prepared himself for so many hours in the air. After they'd gone through security, Eames abandoned Arthur in the terminal to hit Capital News and Gifts, buying an eye mask and earplugs and a neck pillow and several other things that would assist the alcohol in making this a pleasant trip.
Arthur eyed Eames' overlarge shopping bag from his seat at the gate. His legs were crossed nonchalantly, and he had a cup of coffee in one hand and the New York Times crossword half-filled out in the other. He looked appallingly calm for someone about to spend an entire waking day in a flying tin can.
"I felt underprepared," Eames said lamely, flopping next to Arthur and beginning to undo all the packaging of his many and varied items. Arthur pretended to ignore him, filling in "C-U-P-A-C-A-B-R-A" into tiny little boxes with a fancy ballpoint pen, the bastard, but Eames caught him looking more than once as Eames unveiled his ultra-plush eye mask and squished at the gel inside.
They boarded the plane, thankfully in First Class. Eames spared a grateful thanks to Arthur on behalf of his legs, knees, and other extended parts, and settled in. It wasn't as if he hadn't taken long flights before--he of course had, and with some frequency. But he usually had more warning for it, to collect things to help him settle into the unpleasant feeling of enclosure for extended periods of time. He drummed his fingers on his chair's console and watched the airline attendant go through his safety routine, idly assessing the other passengers in the cabin. As the plane began to ascend from the tarmac, he looked over, and Arthur was already asleep, the bastard, somehow bonelessly unconscious without even trying.
Eames took two flutes of champagne, one for him and one for Arthur--and now Eames--and settled in to watch some undoubtedly awful film about silly, pretty things refusing to be adults. He tried not to shift in his chair.
Eventually he did fall asleep, eye mask askew on on his face and rubbish airline blanket tangled in his legs. When he awoke again, they were apparently crossing over the brown expanse of California. Eames slowly removed his head from its uncomfortable angle resting against the swell of Arthur's right clavicle and looked out the window. It was the middle of the night; they were due to land some time in the evening in Honolulu. Going backwards in time was the most awful thing in the world.
Arthur absently brushed a hand over Eames' head, and Eames fixated on the slightly loosened half-windsor Arthur was sporting. Then his eyes swept upwards to meet Arthur's own, the tired, slight smile on his face and the hint that he'd been drinking evident on his breath.
Oh, Eames thought. Oh, dear.
He shifted upwards, pulling out of the ungainly sprawl he'd found himself in, stretching towards the ceiling and attempting to pop his back. The flight attendant, one of the three he'd flirted with shamelessly in the handful of hours he'd been awake, was there promptly asking if he'd like something to drink, or perhaps a snack? Eames ordered a scotch and soda and some crackers. When he turned to look again at Arthur, as if he was magnetised and Arthur was due north, Arthur had rested his chin on his lovely, pointy fingers and was watching him with something approaching amusement.
"You're too relaxed," Eames blurted out, desperately wishing he could slap a hand over his own mouth and keep from sounding more like a tosser.
Arthur only raised an eyebrow, and with his other hand, undid his top button.
Eames made a strangled noise and reached blindly for the drink that had, thank the christ himself, appeared at his fingertips.
"My father was in the Navy, and when I was growing up he was a Detective for the Honolulu Police Department," Arthur said, and Eames tried not to choke on his drink. "I have an older brother, Steve, and an older sister, Mary. Our surname is McGarrett--I guess I should get that out of the way now." He took a nonchalant sip from his gin and tonic.
In those handful of words Eames learned more about Arthur's family than he had in five years of semi-intentioned investigatory effort. Whatever they might say about Eames, Arthur had buckled down any hint of personal history from even the most thorough of checks.
"Ah," Eames said intelligently.
Arthur smiled again, a slight upward crook of his lovely mouth. "Steve, my brother who's in the hospital, went into Naval Intelligence. Mary--well, Mary does whatever the fuck she wants and it works for her most of the time." He swept his hands out as if to encompass all of himself. "And I became someone's forgotten dream."
"If your siblings are as terrifyingly competent as you, I despair of meeting them," Eames said with that disturbing streak of honesty that had plagued him in the last twenty-four hours. However, his lack of filter did make Arthur laugh, and Eames had learned long ago that he would debase himself in dismaying ways for the merest hint of Arthur's amusement.
Arthur's hand stole out to graze Eames' knee, and Eames started; but Arthur merely rearranged the several blankets Eames had somehow acquired so that they better covered the pair of them, knees tucked closely together. Arthur carefully threaded his arm around Eames' and clasped their hands together, and this time when he smiled Eames could feel his heart plummet to his heels and then rise once more, a crescendo of emotion and recognition that Eames had sworn off for good when Elizabeth Marten and then Benedict Caffyn had both broken his heart in rapid succession in primary school.
But there it was again, that feeling of helpless adoration for the slightest of things, overlaid upon Arthur as though Eames had not spent the better portion of his life ruthlessly tamping down any hint of such awful feelings.
Oh dear, Eames thought wretchedly.
The last number of hours on the plane were spent somewhere between getting blindingly inebriated and sneaking sadly unsubtle glances at the line of Arthur's jaw. By the time they deplaned, Eames had only sobered up to the point where he could effectively pretend to be sober, and had clenched an unresponsive hand around Arthur's wrist as they made their way to the car rental desk.
Arthur, bless his argyle socks, did not appear to notice Eames' compromised state.
When they finally departed the Honolulu airport in the Accord identical to the one they left behind in New York, Eames had regained some sense of himself. At least, enough to keep him from latching on to Arthur like a desperate child. He rolled down the window as they drove. The air smelled like seawater and lemons, an altogether different smell from anywhere else he had ever been; and in this he was including the Indian subcontinent, which had a similar climate but an altogether different scent about it.
Arthur's hair had wilted in the weather, and he hadn't bothered to fix it; instead it was curling delightfully around his ears and his forehead. At some point in the last half-hour he had discarded his waistcoat, removed his tie, and unbuttoned a further three buttons of his well-tailored shirt, revealing the sloping hint of a collarbone and a blindingly white undershirt. Eames thought he might faint from the sight. Unbuttoning Arthur was often his favorite of pastimes; for Arthur to do it himself was welcome surprise. Welcome, and fucking gorgeous.
"You might look to your right," Arthur said, amusement evident in his voice. "It's kind of a pretty view."
Eames wrenched his eyes away from the sight of Arthur in a state of semi-relaxation and his breath caught at the sight of blue, blue waters. "How could you have ever left?" he asked rhetorically, himself a frequent resident of a coastline but knowing sheer natural paradise when he saw it.
Arthur snorted softly. "Given enough reasons, a person might move to Antarctica," he said, explaining everything and nothing at all.
Eames found himself staring again at Arthur's profile; when they rounded a corner, his eyes flickered down to Arthur's right arm, where he was still wearing his watch. Reaching tentative fingers outward, he landed them light on Arthur's foream. When Arthur didn't flinch, only watched the road with the same focus to which he applied everything, Eames carefully undid the clasp of his watch and slid it off Arthur's hand. There was a tan line still visible, inexplicable from recent days spent in Munich and Jinan and Smethwick, but there nonetheless.
"Welcome home, Arthur," Eames said softly, and Arthur's hand reached for Eames' own.
They pulled up into the driveway of a large, comfortable house. No one else was there when they went inside, but there were signs of life--dishes in the sink, empty beer bottles on the counter, a stray pizza box. Arthur dropped his duffel on the floor and crossed the room to exit out a back door; Eames just took in the place.
It was difficult to imagine Arthur here, neat, lovely Arthur who seemed to be composed of right angles and pressed pants. The worn blankets covering the sofa, a haphazard pile of sandals by the door--it forced Eames to reassess his understanding of Arthur, changing from preference to, perhaps, reaction. Was it the older brother? Or mayhap the father that Arthur set himself against, creating an alternate persona unlike his origins. But even now Arthur didn't seem uncomfortable here. If he had made peace with it, whatever it was, it was some time ago.
Arthur returned minutes later from the porch with a displeased look upon his face. Eames kicked his own bag to the side and walked up to him, where he was looking at his phone in displeasure.
"What is it then, dear?" Eames asked, wanting to smudge his thumb across the space between Arthur's eyebrows.
"Steve just tried to AMA himself out of the hospital," Arthur said, with that slipshod balance between anger and worry that Eames had rarely ever heard directed towards anyone other than Cobb, and on one memorable occasion, himself. "Danny's sitting on him, but we should probably head over there now so I can deck him into submission."
"I see," said Eames, though he did nothing of the sort. "Who's this Danny, then?"
Arthur looked up, and his face cleared a bit. "He's the guy that made my idiot brother settle down," he said a little wryly, tucking his phone into his pocket and removing his cuff links to roll the sleeves of his shirt up his arms. Eames watched avidly, tamping down hunger. "Steve's never been the most...stable, let's say, of people. But--" and his face shuttered a bit, and Eames gave in to the impulse to place careful fingers on Arthur's forearm. To his gratification, Arthur covered Eames' hand with his own.
Arthur took a careful breath and said, "Our dad was murdered a couple of years ago. It was a guy Steve had been tracking in his work for Naval Intelligence--Hesse."
Eames sucked in a breath. He didn't wander into those circles, ever, not since he was a young, stupid boy with rocknrolla dreams. He didn't wander, but he did listen.
"Yeah. So he killed the old man out of sport, or for money, I'm not really sure. I never asked. Steve, the improbable jerk, was offered special dispensation from the Governor to hunt him down, and picked up Danny along the way. Danny was a detective for Honolulu PD--now he's Steve's partner on the state's special task force."
The way Arthur said the world made Eames think there was more to it than that, but it was hardly question time. "His keeper, then?"
Arthur's smile was a prize. "Something like that." His face dipped again and he unconsciously reached for his phone. "C'mon, we better go. Danny was already sounding a little crazy when I called."
Eames followed him back out to the car, taking one last glance at the house where Arthur had been a child. From there, to here. Eames had only rarely been caught so flat-footed; he couldn't wait to learn about what he'd been wrong on next.
***
The hospital was much the same as any of the dozen in which Eames had the unfortunate experience of residing.
They made their way up to the Critical Care Unit, and Eames waited patiently while Arthur had a quick word at the nurses' station. They were pointed to a room just down the hall, and as Arthur approached the tension returned to his stance. Eames hesitated a moment, and then swept his hand in a concerted gesture from Athur's shoulder to the small of his back. Arthur turned his head and shot him a look--somewhat unreadable, between wary and fond. Eames pressed his hand more firmly, and Arthur stepped half an inch closer.
"I'm sure he's fine," Eames all but whispered, and Arthur snorted. "I know he's fine," he said, sounding frustrated. "I just--he's thirty-five years old. He can't keep fucking himself up like this and expecting to get out scot free."
Eames nodded, like he thought he ought to, but somewhere inside his mind was a traitorous little voice that said, But darling, you get shot in the head for a living, are you truly one to talk after that awful job last year?
And then, because this trip was hardly complete without Arthur once more cutting through whatever screens Eames thought he had put between his mind and his face, Arthur snapped, "What I do is different. I only get shot at in dreams. Steve runs into bullets in real fucking life, okay?"
Following that pronouncement, he stomped into one of the private rooms, leaving Eames to windmill in the corridor wondering if every bloody thing must be written on his face for damnable Arthur to see now.
He followed, of course. As if he wouldn't.
The tableau, when he entered the hotel room, was lifted from some classical triptych--the veritable Steve McGarrett in the center, with two pinch-faced angels on either side of his hotel bed. Eames hovered in the door frame, trying to decide what sort of tactic he should take with the brother of the man he had been sort-of besotted with for the past number of years.
As it turned out, he needn't have bothered trying to figure such things out. The sheer force of the elder McGarrett brother was enough to eradicate any plans for controlling the situation.
"You must be Eames," Steve said from the bed, eyes visibly narrowing even from several feet of distance. "Lemme ask you a question--Arthur says he's in 'information distribution.' On a scale of one to bullshit, how thoroughly should I investigate your background to figure out just what the fuck you're doing with my baby brother?"
"Steve!" Arthur hissed, dropping Steve's hand on the bed.
"Right--well--" Eames started, not entirely sure whether to head in the entirely opposite direction or commend Arthur for discovering such a elegantly neutral phrase for their particular brand of espionage.
"Okay," said a thundering voice from the gentleman on the left side of the bed, "let's just get this one straight right the fuck-all now. There will be no interrogating of boyfriends while in the hospital bed. There will be no threats of violence from the hospital bed. There will be no, and I repeat, no, stressful proclamations of any fucking kind from the hospital bed. So take a knee right now, McGarrett, before I tell Dr. Kealoha how that vein in your forehead is trying to form its own zip code."
"Danny," Steve protested, but a hand landed squarely in the center of his chest and pinned him gently to the bed.
"Nada," Danny said threateningly, and Arthur crossed his arms and stuck out his fucking tongue at his older brother. "Let's try this again," Danny continued. "How about a 'Hi, I'm Steve, Arthur's nosy overprotective brother, you must be the mysterious long-term boyfriend he uses to avoid coming home for Thanksgiving!'"
Steve and Arthur raised the same eyebrow, at the same time, at Danny.
"Now that's just eerie," Danny said.
"You have no idea," Eames said fervently. "Also, Arthur, how is you've never deigned to inform me that I'm your stock familial excuse?"
Arthur faltered for a moment, but rallied as he ran a hand through his hair. "You've stuck around the longest," he hedged. "And you're the only one I've mentioned more than once. Some people," he said, glaring at Steve, "infer too much."
"Oh, I think I've inferred exactly the right amount," Steve said, eyes squinting in some oddly McGarrett way in Arthur's general direction.
"I agree with your brother," Eames said before checking his own mouth, earning Arthur's full-on glare swinging in his direction.
"Ooo-kay," Danny said, waving his hands around in such a fashion as everyone was forced to turn towards him--if only to avoid being smacked in the face. "Not that this isn't a touching family reunion, but Arthur, how about we give you a minute to catch up with your brother. Eames, No-First-Name-I-Bet-You-Have-An-Interpol-Record, let's go get some coffee."
Torn a moment between staying near Arthur and rather wanting to escape the situation, Eames agreed only after Arthur had waved a hand at him in a dismissive manner and turned back towards his brother. Danny clapped a hand on his shoulder and led him from the room. "Now, as a courtesy I'm not going to try and fingerprint you in the cafeteria, but I gotta say, Steve will probably hunt you down if you hurt Arthur, and he's already got a couple of manhunts on his plate. So let's make nice for ten minutes, and then you and the prodigal brother can get on your merry, possibly criminal way, sound good?"
Eames nodded. It seemed the thing to do.
In all truth, coffee with Danny wasn't so bad. They carefully avoided talking about anything having to do with work, and instead discussed ideal pizza toppings on a New York slice and the sad lack of proper schmear anywhere other than the Eastern seaboard. When they returned to the hotel room, Arthur was sitting in a chair by the bed, his hands steepled, and Steve was resting with his eyes closed and the lights lowered.
Arthur looked up when they returned and rose to meet them outside the door. "I don't think he's slept in the last twelve hours," he said, worry evident in his voice. "Danny, did you nail the shithead that did this? He's not going to rest until the guy's behind bars."
Danny made a face. "Chin and Kono are out pounding the pavement," he said like he wanted to apologize. "We won't be able to put anything concrete on him until we have a matching sketch for the BOLO, and the witness has been unconscious since she was attacked. We're up shit creek."
Arthur blew out a frustrated sigh. "Okay. I--we--can stay with him if you need to get back to Grace, or the department."
Danny shook his head. "Grace is with her mom this week, I get her next week. But--look, I need to be here as much as you do, but I'll make you a deal. If you can stay here until maybe the morning, I'll go home, get a shower, a couple of z's and then be back bright and early."
Arthur was already nodding. "You look like shit, Danny. Go home, we've got this."
Danny barked out a laugh. "Thanks, Arthur, you're real fucking kind." His eyes were smiling as he said it, though, something like relief showing in them. Eames stepped closer to Arthur, trying to provide a unified front. It said something, that Danny trusted Arthur even suspecting his more...questionable legal choices.
Eames knew how to turn a delicate phrase himself.
They sat there all night, betting M&M's over hands of poker in the half-light of the table lamp. Around midnight, Arthur slipped out of his shoes and slid his feet into Eames' lap, and Eames played one-handed. The other kneaded Arthur's feet until he was a boneless pile of well-tailored clothes on the other side of the cheap table that separated them. Finally, an hour or so later, Arthur's eyes started to slip closed. Eames gently took his poker hand from his lax fingers, checking momentarily to ascertain whether his count of Arthur's cards was correct or not (it of course was), and flicked off the light, settling back into his own chair.
The shadow from the car park's fluorescents cast a sallow glow over Arthur's sharp features, and Eames considered the man sitting across from him. Twenty-four hours ago, they stood in a nameless suburb in a sleepy town working in a field that perhaps fifty people in the world knew existed. Today, nearly everything he'd thought he'd known about this man had been turned out and replaced with new, far more interesting truths.
Eames had always thought of their "relationship," if one might even be inclined to so use the term, as something of a particularly vigorous and satisfying game of pigtail-pulling. He delighted in getting a rise out of Arthur; Arthur seemed to enjoy thwarting his attempts at familiarity and making Eames work harder than he otherwise tended to. Most of the time it ended in athletic, mutually enjoyable sex and the occasional amusing text message every few weeks.
But if Eames wasn't lying to himself--and no matter what he did to other people, he generally made a habit of truth-telling within the confines of his own consciousness--he would have to admit that he had put something of his heart in the bargain for a fair amount of time now.
Years, if he were being honest.
He had simply never thought, even in his most idle fantasies, that Arthur might feel something in return.
Eames shifted, ghosting a hand over Arthur's socked feet where they remained in his lap. Clearly there were emotions now. Something in him had prompted him to attend to Arthur on this journey; something in Arthur had allowed him to come. However they had gotten here, things had changed between them, and Eames had made the decision to see it through regardless of how it concluded.
Of course, he dearly hoped it concluded with them continuing on together in all things. These brief glimpses of this other Arthur, this younger brother and Navy brat and unbuttoned, un-waistcoated version of Arthur were far too personally destructive to ever return to their previous arrangement with any measure of satisfaction.
Eames let his eyes close on the sight of Arthur, mouth partly open, lovely swathe of skin barely visible from the opening in his finely striped shirt, and fell asleep with no dream to follow.
They didn't wake until Danny returned in the morning, shaking them awake warily as if he were somehow experienced with Arthur's little quirk of attempting to disarm people whilst half-asleep. Eames ran a hand blearily over his face, scraping stubble, and regretfully pushed Arthur's feet from his lap.
Danny looked better for his rest, freshly showered with a laptop bag strung over his shoulder. He picked up the coffee tray he had sensibly placed on the bed where Steve remained asleep and offered it to the pair of them. Arthur and Eames both took a cup gratefully.
"So now I get to tell you that you both look like shit, go home," Danny said without preamble, perching on the hospital bed and resting a hand on Steve's blanketed ankle.
Arthur snorted. "And you wonder why I don't come home for Thanksgiving."
Danny raised his eyebrows. "Arthur, I can safely say that I've never wondered why you didn't come home. I just got to see the results of your occasional visits, and let me tell you, Steve winding himself up chasing rumours from the other side of the world isn't exactly conducive to a restful night."
Eames watched Arthur groan softly and bury his head in his hands, soft strands of hair spilling over his fingers. He mumbled something that Eames strained to hear.
"I'm sorry, what was that, I don't speak the reprobate brother dialect," Danny said, cupping a hand around his ear comically.
Arthur raised his head, but spoke through his fingers. "I will come home this winter."
Danny smiled. It was a very satisfied smile. "Excellent. Now go home, get some sleep, get each other off, whatever. You're not allowed back in the hospital until evening visiting hours."
Arthur didn't protest; Eames was surprised, but shuffled them out of there, shaking Danny's hand and heading back to the car.
They got back to the house swiftly enough, and Eames trailed after Arthur's breadcrumbs of expensive menswear. A button-up, a sock, a belt, an a-shirt. He slipped out of his own things easily enough, and without a second's thought followed Arthur beneath the duvet, feeling Arthur's arms slide over him to be the larger spoon, and shut his eyes to the sound of waves crashing outside the window.
When Eames woke up again, a ruddy spear of late afternoon light cut through the window, lighting the room off the pale colour of the walls. Arthur wasn't there, and Eames slipped from the bed through the quiet house. The clothes had been removed from the corridor, and Eames spared a wistful thought for the entirely platonic show he received last night.
Well. Perhaps not entirely platonic.
In the kitchen, which seemed a natural place to gravitate towards, there was a pot of coffee made, some type of sugared doughnut next to the coffeemaker in a paper carton, and a single empty mug with a packet of English Breakfast resting atop it like a question. Eames smiled, finger reaching out to trace "E-N-G" but opting, ultimately, for the coffee.
He filled the mug and spooned sugar inside, wandering over to the kitchen table. It looked as though someone had been to visit while he was sleeping; as he recalled, the table had only featured an empty fruit bowl and a handful of nearly done candles. Now there were several stacks of files gracing its surface, a closed laptop and a rather expensive looking electronic reader resting on what seemed to be witness reports from the Honolulu Police Department.
Lacking anything else to do, and being a rather nosy man--for a living and a hobby--Eames sat down to read.
An hour, or easily more, passed by before there was a clattering from the back porch. Eames looked up from the file he was reviewing, peering through the not-quite-right reading glasses he had filched from aside table in the front room to witness a sight he would not easily forget.
Arthur entered, wearing a wetsuit, of all deeply thrilling things, peeled down over his lovely chest just shy of his belly button. Water lightly coursed from the loose tangle of hair he pushed from his eyes, running down the plane of his torso and forcing Eames to stare, pole-axed, at the sight of Arthur's hardened nipples, the dark trail of hair leading towards his very tight wetsuit, and the defined lines of his strong thighs.
The ankle closure of the wetsuit fell about two inches too short. Eames wanted to lick there. He thought he might hyperventilate instead.
Arthur, seemingly unaware of the devastating image he made, set his surfboard---his surfboard, my god, Eames would never be able to watch Point Break again without thinking of this moment--against the side of the house and shook out his hair on the other side of the door frame before stepping in.
"What's wrong?" he said, tilting his head to the side. "Also, you have powdered sugar all over your mouth. How many of those malasadas did you eat?"
Dumbly, Eames looked down at the carton of doughnuts to find that, in his absent exploration into the circumstances surrounding the elder McGarrett brother's traumatic accident, he had indeed eaten more than half of the things.
Damn. He usually had more self-control.
He looked up again, watching Arthur peel down his wetsuit to reveal equally tight swim trunks, and revised his opinion of his restraint.
"Darling, come here, I think I might ravish you against this table," Eames said thoughtfully, setting his papers aside.
Arthur snorted. "You're cute in those glasses, but you're not that cute," which was the most ungracious lie, as Eames could see everything in the swim trunks Arthur was all but poured into. Eames would clearly have to retain that newfound knowledge of Arthur's affection for eyewear for another time.
He rose, setting the glasses atop his papers, and caught Arthur's arm, turning him around and pushing him against the wall. "I suppose this wall will do," he said, fitting his mouth to Arthur's. Arthur's arms came around his shoulders, and Eames swept his hands up and down Arthur's wet back, coming to rest upon the swell of Arthur's ass. He smelled of the ocean and clean sweat, and that particular smell Eames had come to associate with his pillows in the morning after Arthur had left for another job. Arthur made a gratifyingly desperate sound against Eames, and Eames let out a hungry sigh as he attempted to lift Arthur upwards.
The scene was momentarily arrested by a small, pointed cough that sounded quite a bit like a laugh. Arthur froze and turned; Eames had little choice but to follow, as that's where Arthur's lips were, after all.
A very beautiful woman, largely nude but for a bikini that barely lived up to its name, was at the door where Arthur had been moments ago, haloed in the evening sunlight and smirking irrepressibly.
"If I had realized that wearing your high school wetsuit would get you molested, I would have made you wear one of Steve's," she said, placing her surfboard against the door atop Arthur's and resting her hands on her hips.
Arthur groaned. "He's a giant," which was true, Eames suspected anything of Steve's would look ridiculous on Arthur knowing him only from a bed. Arthur pushed Eames away, but in a manner that involved a quick grope. Eames didn't allow his hand to stray from Arthur's swimsuit until Arthur physically returned his hand to him with a warning glare. How ineffective.
"Kono, this is Eames," Arthur said, moving out of reach of Eames' hands. "Eames, this is Kono. She works with my brother."
"And he used to date my sister," she said with mischievous helpfulness.
"In high school," Arthur protested. "Lena and I dated in high school"
"Shall I make you my new best friend?" Eames said hopefully.
Kono laughed with her whole body. "Oh, I like him," she said to Arthur. "Maybe I'll dig up that prom picture of you and Lena."
Eames said "Yes!" just as Arthur shouted "No!"
Arthur rolled his eyes and wiped his feet on the mat before crossing the room to collect his phone. He had a message--Eames had heard it beep while he had been reading--and brought it up to his ear to listen.
"You know, you're not as mysterious as I thought you'd be," Kono said as she toweled out her hair and sprayed off her feet using the hose on the porch.
Eames leaned against the wall where he had just pressed Arthur and lifted a shoulder. "I suppose it's hard to be mysterious whilst wearing house clothes," he said.
She grinned. She really was quite lovely. "Yeah, that's true," she said. "But I mean--I've known Arthur since we were kids. He's been back, like, a few times since I started working with his brother, and any time someone asked him about what he was doing he'd say something like, 'Oh, I'm meeting someone for a job, gotta go,' or 'I need to get back to someone, catch you later Steve.'" She eyed him critically. "And yours was the only name he mentioned more than once. So yeah, mysterious, but not as mysterious as I thought."
Kono pulled on a long pair of shorts and threaded a shirt over her head. Eames ran a hand through his hair and let his eyes fall on Arthur, who was furiously thumbing something into his phone.
"He was just as opaque about his life here," Eames offered finally. "I didn't even know he had siblings until his brother was in hospital."
Kono's smile was lopsided. "Yeah, well. It's understandable. The McGarrett family is pretty fucked up. Arthur was the only point of contact between Steve and their sister Mary for, like, years. And Arthur wasn't exactly phoning home every week."
Eames followed her to the kitchen; Arthur disappeared into the room they had slept in the night before, and Eames let his eyes stray to his lovely backside before turning back to Kono, who held out a Kona Longboard lager with a knowing grin. Eames most definitely did not blush, and tried for a leer instead; from her look, it didn't work terribly well.
They sat in the living room, Kono curling into the sofa and Eames sitting on the lounger. He took a long pull--it wasn't bad. In fact it was rather similar to the light lagers from India he'd had when he lived more regularly in Mombasa.
"Mrs. McGarrett died in a car accident when they were all kids," Kono continued, and Eames blinked away his surprise.
"Both parents?" he said. "That's..."
Kono rested her head on her hand. "Yeah. They haven't exactly had it easy, you know? Mr. McGarrett shipped them all off to the mainland like a month after. Steve was sent to some uncle on the East coast, and Mary and Arthur were with their grandmother in California. And then Arthur came back here after Mary turned eighteen and ran off. He was just a kid when it all happened, and came back to live with Mr. McGarrett for like four years before he took off for the mainland too." She shook her head a little, drinking her beer.
"What--well. I don't suppose you know what he did next," Eames asked, hurting a bit that he'd never know these essential parts of Arthur, eager to know as much as this woman might tell him.
"Nope. No one does, not even Steve. And Steve was a dick for a really long time, too. I mean, I didn't really know him then, but he joined the Navy like their dad and didn't come back to Hawaii until their dad was murdered. Mary didn't come back for the funeral, and Arthur did, but he didn't talk to anyone, just stayed for the funeral and the burial and then took off again. And then Mary came back. I think--and I'm just guessing, because I don't really know--but I think Arthur told her everything that happened, and convinced her to come back." Kono's eyes scanned around the room, like she was remembering the last couple of years in a handful of moments. "So Mary and Steve finally talked again, and Steve started reaching out to Arthur. Arthur started coming back once or twice, and they all figured some shit out, but..."
"Some things are still broken," Eames finished.
She smiled sadly. "And how, man."
They sat quietly for a moment before Arthur returned from the guest room. He was wearing board shorts and a loose fitting t-shirt, and if Eames had thought the wetsuit was the most wonderful thing he might see today he was clearly mistaken. He opened his mouth to comment on it, and the clear lack of styling product in Arthur's lovely hair, but stopped when he saw the displeased turn of Arthur's mouth. "What is it?" he said instead.
"Danny called earlier, said Steve was cleared from immediate head trauma," he said. "But I just called back and Steve is trying to AMA himself again, even though Dr. Kealoha wants to keep him another forty-eight hours for observation for internal bleeding."
Kono started cursing. "That fucker, he fell off a construction rig from sixty feet and hit a steel shipping crate! He broke three ribs!"
Arthur threw up his hands. "I know! We have to get back over there, Eames, I don't think Danny can keep him there by himself."
Eames nodded. "Of course. Shall I go start the car?"
"Yeah," Arthur said. "Let me just put on some shoes." He slid a pair of flip flops onto his feet, just slightly too large for him, and Eames was distracted for a moment by the visible presence of Arthur's toes in footwear.
"Eames!" Arthur said sharply. "Car! Go now!"
"Yes dear," Eames said automatically. "And I know it's not the time, but I just thought I should inform you that this is the longest we've ever been in the same place without having sex. In case you should like to rectify that later."
"Car!" Arthur bellowed, but Eames could see that some of the tension in his shoulders had minutely relaxed. Which was of course his purpose; that, and prompting the idea of another sort of stress relief. He was only human, after all, and Arthur's toes.
He grabbed a pair of trousers from his bag, still by the door, and fumbled the key into the ignition, turning it over. As the car hummed, he shucked off his pyjama bottoms and drew on the trousers, running a hand over his plain shirt and another hand through his fickle hair. It wasn't at all neat, but it would do, he supposed.
The sun was setting before him as Kono and Arthur left the house, Arthur locking the door behind him. Kono's arms were full of papers, and Eames opened the door of her car for her. "Oh, by the way," Eames said, "I just thought you should know that one of the witness statements reported seeing a gentleman dumping a wrench in a barrel near the construction site where Steve fell. She wasn't very detailed, but it was a white man in his mid-thirties that sounded an awful lot like the George Harris fellow described in the file about the Portomento smuggling ring, including the bit about him missing a pinkie finger."
Kono stared at him, mouth slightly ajar. "You--you read the witness reports? And my files?"
Eames shrugged. "Well, you were gone for over an hour," he said apologetically.
"I--but--wait, George Harris?" she blurted, looking as though her mind were turning furiously.
"Yes, as I said, according to your file he's the primary shipping--"
"--contact for the Pacific Rim, yeah, I know, but we thought he'd been deported back to--listen, I have to go," she said hurriedly, slamming the door of her car and running around to the driver's side.
"Eames! Stop bothering Kono, let's go!" Arthur said sharply from the car.
"Right, coming, darling," Eames said, waving at Kono as she peeled out of the driveway and down the private road. He got into the car and smiled at Arthur, who was raising his "not amused" eyebrow at Eames. "I think I just helped in police work, Arthur. I feel a bit dirty to be on this side of the law."
Arthur rolled his eyes and backed out of the drive.
At the hospital for the second day in a row, not much had changed. Danny looked once more tired and pinched, his tie loose around his neck, slumped in a chair by Steve's bed. Steve was watching the television with a mutinous look on his face.
"You tried to AMA again?" Arthur said severely, without preamble.
Danny snorted, one hand thrown over his eyes. "Yeah. While I was out in the hall talking to Chin, the fucker unhooked himself from the machines and tried to hobble out the door in his patient gown."
Steve's face tightened further, and he shifted in what looked to be a painful fashion in his bed. "I'm fine," he insisted.
"You are not fine!" Arthur shouted. "You are the antithesis of fine! Just because they said that you probably don't have brain damage does not mean you are fine!"
"And I for one am not convinced that they're right," Danny said, coming to rest his elbows on his knees, "because you're pretty goddamned brain damaged to me."
"Steve," Arthur said, and something in his voice sounded like the edge of a broken mirror, sharp and just this side of shattering. "Please, please, I am asking you as one of my two remaining family members on this planet, please stay in this fucking hospital bed until the doctor clears you to go. Please."
Eames caught his breath. He was witnessing something he wasn't sure he had a right to see. But Arthur had been so open about everything else, as if all the shutters he'd put to his life in their line of work had fallen away, that Eames thought perhaps Arthur was letting Eames see him like this so he'd understand what he was getting into. So he'd know if he wanted to stick around.
Eames stepped closer, put his hand in the small of Arthur's back. Arthur was shaking with tension, a painful scowl on his face, gaze not wavering from his brother. Steve, for his part, ran through a dozen different minute variations of the same scowl as Arthur's but finally he fell back, looking defeated.
"All right," he said hollowly.
Arthur sagged a little, but immediately rallied himself. He reached a hand back, taking Eames' into his own. "Thank you," he said. "I really don't want to get another phone call saying you're trying to stage an escape. My life is stressful enough as it is."
Steve made a small, protesting noise, eyes firmly affixed to the television above their heads.
Arthur sighed. "Fine. Be a bitch about it, don't talk to me, I don't care. Just don't fucking move." He turned and went out into the hall, tugging Eames along with him.
They walked in silence down the hall, hand in hand like children, until they reached the end of the hall where the vending machines were placed. Arthur stopped, turning to maneuver Eames against the wall, bringing their linked hands up between them. He fitted himself against Eames, listing slightly so that he fell beneath Eames' chin, and Eames let his other hand curve around Arthur's shoulders. He made some soothing noises, just a soft rumble of nonsense as Arthur breathed harshly against him for several minutes.
"I heard Kono tell you about my dad," Arthur said finally, and Eames fought not to tense up, sweeping a calming hand up and down Arthur's spine. "It's okay, it's easier that she told you instead of me. It all pretty much sucked, for a long time. I was the youngest, and when our grandmother died there was nowhere for me to go except back home."
"To your dad," Eames said. He felt Arthur nod against his chest.
"He was never the same after Mom died," Arthur said. "I don't remember it that well, I was only a kid when the car accident happened, but I know how it felt. And then he sent us all away, and became something...broken. More broken, by himself for all those years. He didn't know what to do with me when I came back, so he worked all the time, and I just tried to get through high school and get out of there. When you're a teenager, and you're stuck in a situation like that--the only thing I ever wanted was to be nothing like him."
"And did you succeed?" Eames asked into the fine hair of Arthur's temple.
Arthur snorted. "More than I could have ever dreamed."
Eames waited a moment, and then asked, "Do you regret it?"
Arthur's fingers tightened on Eames' own, but said, "No. Or, not really. I don't regret the life I made. What we do--there's nothing like it in the world. Nothing. It's better than anything else I could have done. But...I wish I'd been there for Mary. And I wish I hadn't resented Steve for so long, for not being there, for going to the Naval Academy and never coming back. I get it now, but I didn't for a long time. It felt like our dad had pushed us away, and that Steve pretended we didn't exist. When Mary went to Chicago, I was by myself at fourteen with a parent who couldn't look at me in the eyes. It was impossible not to be angry."
Eames made a noise of assent.
Arthur pushed back, looking Eames in the eye. Arthur's own eyes were red, but not wet, and Eames felt something in him give way at this Arthur, Arthur who was telling him every truth he'd ever had and trusting Eames with them all. He rubbed his thumb across Arthur's palm, watching each inhalation and exhalation Arthur made and trying not to shake with the gravity of it all.
"But you know," Arthur said, his voice steady, "if all of that hadn't happened, if I hadn't left for the mainland at eighteen and gone to Brown, if I hadn't taken a semester in Paris and became Miles Bonnefort's student, if I hadn't met Mal and her fiance and if I hadn't learned how to build worlds in the space of a thought, I never would have met you. So I don't think I can regret it, you see."
"I don't know, darling," Eames said roughly, their hands gripped between them. "I think we might've found a way."
Arthur's smile was small, but with a fiercely defiant edge to it. "Mr. Eames," he said softly, looking nothing like the man Eames had fallen in love with, but everything like the man Eames knew him to be, "I think you should know that I'm in love with you. I have been, for some time."
"Arthur," he said, and reeled Arthur in close, snogging him within an inch of his life and not caring if they were visible from the nurse's station.
Arthur went pliant against him, and Eames--who thought he had been very good at not fucking Arthur against whatever available surface was present over the last two days--mentally cursed everything about this situation that was not a bed, or at the very least a private toilet. He wanted to unpeel Arthur from his clothes, from his words, from everything that was not Arthur panting messily at his skin.
"Please do not make me arrest you for public indecency," Danny said pleadingly. Arthur and Eames broke apart. Danny was standing in the hallway, a dollar bill in one waving hand and the other clamped firmly over his eyes.
"I would really like this whole business of interruptions to stop," Eames said seriously to Arthur, fingers unable to leave the flushed column of his throat where it made Arthur shiver pleasantly to his touch.
"Give us a minute, Danny," Arthur said, swiping the note from Danny's hand. "I'll get you a soda, okay?"
"Dr. Pepper, please," Danny said, hand not leaving his eyes until he had about-faced, double-timing it down the corridor, tie flapping over his shoulder.
Arthur grinning, and then laughed, pressing Eames back into the wall and resting his forehead against Eames shoulder.
When they returned, a bit more put together and with Danny's soda in hand, not much had changed. Steve had angled himself awkwardly on the bed, body directed away from Danny, and Danny was staring blankly at the television, looking lost inside his own head. Eames handed him the can, which he took absently, cracking it open but not drinking from it.
"Danny, do you want to go home? Eames and I can stay tonight," Arthur said gently, hands resting in the pockets of his shorts.
Danny's eyes flickered over automatically to Steve's mulish form on the bed and his eyes tightened. "Yeah. I'll go back to the house, come back in the morning. Call me if he does anything stupid."
Arthur raised an eyebrow, and Danny shook his head ruefully. "You're right, that was a dumb thing to say. Look, I'm going to go meet Gracie and Rachel for dinner, but after that I'll be back at the house. The doctor is supposed to come in for rounds or whatever at like nine a.m. I don't know if you want to stick around for that or not but he's supposed to get another CT really early before that. He's gonna be grumpy, and they're not letting him have caffeine, so just be prepared."
"Stop talking about me like I'm not in the room," Steve said angrily, punching the pillow and letting out an awful chesty cough.
"I'll stop talking about you when you start acting like the adult I know you are, somewhere deep down inside," Danny retorted. "God, you're worse than Grace when she's sick."
Steve didn't say anything, and Arthur clapped Danny on the shoulder as he left.
"Do you need anything?" Arthur asked Steve, but Steve wouldn't answer him. Arthur shook his head, and he and Eames took up the same places they'd occupied the night before. Eames started to shuffle the cards, and they went back into playing poker like no time had passed at all. Well. This time Arthur was playing footsie with him under the table, his agile, newly-revealed feet doing their best to wind Eames up.
Not that it took much, really.
"You were in Seville last year," Steve said suddenly from the bed. Eames looked over, but Steve wasn't watching them, just staring at the ceiling.
"Good to know your confidential informants are living up to their paychecks," Arthur replied mildly, dropping a card and taking another.
"You were working out of a office building in la Negrilla," Steve continued in a monotone, as if he were reciting facts from a report. "There were two others on your team, and you did prep for ten days before making a move, but then you disappeared and there were no corroborating reports to indicate anything happened."
"Perhaps that means I completed my job successfully," Arthur said.
"Arthur," Steve said, and his voice sounded strained, "what do you do, on these jobs? I've never figured it out. You don't steal art, or things; you don't work for any of the crime syndicates, you don't sell anything on the open market. I've been tracking you for years, I know you're doing something shady, but I can't figure it the fuck out!"
"Someone might take that as a hint to stop looking, then," and Arthur sounded less mild, more agitated with a side of constipation. Eames reached one hand down and clasped Arthur's ankle, pulling it up to rest on his own knee, rubbing the skin there soothingly.
"Stop feeling up my brother in front of me," Steve complained.
"No," Eames said, setting down his cards to shuffle the deck one-handed. Steve made a disbelieving noise.
That made Arthur smile. "Steve, we've had this conversation or variations on it every time I've seen you in the last two years. Stop asking. I'm not going to tell you what I do. You wouldn't like it if I did."
"Fuck you," Steve said harshly.
"No, big brother, fuck you," Arthur said with a little heat. "I don't have to explain shit to you. Just because I didn't go into the Navy to become some perfect military drone doesn't mean my choices weren't right for me."
"You don't explain anything to me!" Steve roared, and immediately started coughing wetly, wracking his body against the bed.
"Fuck, Steve!" Arthur said frantically, rising from his chair to press Steve back into the bed. "Eames, go get the nurse--"
"On it," Eames said grimly, running out into the hallway and grabbing the first uniform-clad person he could find. The room was soon flooded with people, and as they took over, Eames collected Arthur and they huddled in a corner, watching them swarm Steve who had gone pale with exertion.
"I shouldn't have let him get riled up, fuck, I should have just shut the fuck up, why did I do that, god, if something happens--" Arthur babbled, hands latched on Eames' forearm.
"He's going to be fine, he's as stubborn as you, isn't he?" Eames said, keeping him close.
Arthur looked up at him, eyes wild. "He's such a bastard but he's my brother,, Eames."
"I know," Eames said. "I know, Arthur. He'll be fine."
An hour later, after they'd been directed to a nearby waiting room, one of the doctors came to fetch them. "He's been sedated," she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes, "and he's ruptured the stitches on his torso, but we've ruled out a punctured lung, so if he can get some rest he should be fine for now."
"Thank you," Eames said for the both of them, and led an unresisting Arthur back to the room. Steve was asleep, and Arthur drifted over to the side of the bed, resting a careful hand on Steve's leg. "You have to get better, you asshole," he whispered. "Stop doing this to me, to other people. You don't have to know everything to care about someone. Sometimes you just have to have faith in them."
Eames leaned against the door and crossed his arms, watching the bowed line of Arthur's back in the half-light.
"I love you too," he said.
"I know you do," Arthur replied, and when he turned his face was wet.
part I | part II | part III | masterpost | notes
by templemarker
part I | part II | part III | masterpost | notes
***
They were working a simple bait-and-extract, pulling corporate espionage on one company and feeding it to a competitor, when Arthur got a phone call.
This was notable only in that it was directed to Arthur's personal line, which, in Eames' vast experience monitoring the intricacies of Arthur's working habits, had never once rung whilst during business hours. Whenever those happened to be.
In fact, Eames had long suspected that Arthur's "personal phone" was secretly an excuse for him to fuck off for a smoke break and destroy some smug porcine smiles with some equally vicious birds. And so he watched with bright-eyed interest as Arthur slipped the device from his pocket and stared at the screen in what appeared to be surprised consternation.
"Excuse me," he said to the room, "I need to take this."
Neither Maude (the chemist) nor Paolo (the architect) looked up from their workspaces. Eames waited a beat, and then quietly followed Arthur out into the back garden of the empty, newly built home they were working out of for job prep.
"--what do you mean, you're in the hospital?" Arthur hissed, his voice sounding unusually high-pitched. "Steve, I swear to god, I thought you said when you were taking this task force job that you'd be less prone to calling me with stories of your near-death experiences!"
Eames couldn't hear the reply from this distance, but Arthur's face grew more pinched and he rested his head against the decorative arbor covered delightfully with ornamental ivy. To date, Eames thought only he put such displeasure on Arthur's lovely visage, but apparently he was incorrect. He had competition.
"What did Danny say?" Arthur asked abruptly, clearly cutting off this Steve person in the middle of a sentence. "No, I don't care that--Steve! Steve! What did Danny say?" Arthur nearly shouted into the receiver of his mobile, ears going slightly pink at the tips.
Dear god, Eames thought, how strange to watch this when it's not directed towards him.
"If Danny says the doctor thinks you should stay in the hospital for the week, you better fucking keep your ass in that bed or I'm buying Mary a first class ticket from the mainland tonight," Arthur positively growled, and that seemed to quiet the man on the other side of the line.
Arthur blew out a breath. One rogue strand of hair had fallen from its otherwise perfect swell, and it danced slightly in the air as Arthur expressed his frustration.
"I'm coming out," he said, and his face had turned from irritation to determination. Not even Cobb could turn Arthur's mind when he set a decision like so; Eames had never even bothered to try, knowing it futile from the first moment he saw the tilt of Arthur's chin. "No. Don't even. You're an asshole, a dangerous, risk-taking asshole, but you're my brother, and Danny will need some help keeping you in bed."
There's some further back-and-forth, but Eames had heard all he needed to and more besides. He wandered into the kitchen, black-on-black marble and tile shining a bit with the late afternoon sun, and put the kettle on. He went through the motions of preparing a cuppa, and after a moment's hesitation pulled a second mug from the dish drainer. He watched the light of the kettle and listened for Arthur's re-entry.
Arthur stepped into the kitchen, put together with no hair out of place, looking as though he hadn't just gotten into a familial screaming match outside where their non-existent neighbors couldn't hear.
"I need to take a couple of days off," he said. "We may have to put the job back by a week, to meet that secondary opening in the mark's schedule, but it shouldn't affect the schedule too dramatically. Maude wanted more time with the quick-release Somnacin compound anyway."
Eames didn't say anything, just poured water at the boil over the tea, stirring in a bit of sugar for Arthur and a bit of cream for himself. Wordlessly he handed Arthur his mug; to his credit, Arthur took it without criticism.
In fact, Arthur was watching him with an odd look on his face, which is when Eames realized it was probably strange that he hadn't replied to Arthur's dispassionate accounting of things.
"It's a family matter," Arthur said finally, taking a sip of his tea. "Usually it's a non-issue, but I'm afraid I can't set this one aside."
That's the crux of it, isn't it? Eames had always assumed that Arthur simply didn't have family, that he had lost it or walked away from it or somehow sprung fully formed into the driven, focused man Eames had worked with and occasionally fucked about with for so many years now. But now it was as though some curtain had been opened, revealed a new and interesting bit of Arthur that Eames had never seen before and thus was so bloody fascinating.
"I'd like to come with you," Eames said, and he was as surprised to have said it as Arthur was to have heard it.
"I--what?" Arthur asked, and his confusion was entirely justified; because while they've been more or less on and off and then on again for more time than Eames was perhaps comfortable with, they'd never been particularly keen on things such as emotions or personal histories or even a birthday e-card.
But Eames didn't doubt for a moment that Arthur could rattle off Eames' birthday as though it was his own, and there had always been the hint that there might be something more at play here than some truly stellar sex.
They had ignored it, until now, until Eames' curiosity and his rather too-quick mouth.
"I'd like to go with you," he said, meeting Arthur's eyes. "I'd like to meet your brother."
Arthur swallowed, looking as though he was going to deny, deny, deny that he was anything other than a demigod borne from some deity's thigh, but instead says, "Okay."
Eames raised an eyebrow. "Really, darling? I somehow expected more of a protest."
Arthur took another sip of his tea, licking at his lip to catch a stray drop. "Well, we'll see how you feel about pineapple on your pizza," he says, walking back towards the main room. "I'll book two seats for Honolulu tonight."
"Hawaii?" Eames said dumbly, still stirring the teaspoon in his mug. "You mean to say you're from Hawaii?"
***
Maude and Paolo barely noticed as they left the uniformly homogenous residence they were working out of in upstate New York, both too engrossed in their work to care much for what the extractors were doing. Arthur favored bringing them in because they required so little management; Eames because he couldn't think of anyone else who could carve out four weeks for the gig. They had worked together more than once and Arthur, of course, was right--they didn't require much beyond parameters and materials to get the job done.
They drove in Arthur's rented Accord to Albany, where Arthur had booked them on a thirteen-hour flight from Albany to Honolulu. Eames hadn't even known you could get direct flights from this corner of the world to the other, and hadn't quite prepared himself for so many hours in the air. After they'd gone through security, Eames abandoned Arthur in the terminal to hit Capital News and Gifts, buying an eye mask and earplugs and a neck pillow and several other things that would assist the alcohol in making this a pleasant trip.
Arthur eyed Eames' overlarge shopping bag from his seat at the gate. His legs were crossed nonchalantly, and he had a cup of coffee in one hand and the New York Times crossword half-filled out in the other. He looked appallingly calm for someone about to spend an entire waking day in a flying tin can.
"I felt underprepared," Eames said lamely, flopping next to Arthur and beginning to undo all the packaging of his many and varied items. Arthur pretended to ignore him, filling in "C-U-P-A-C-A-B-R-A" into tiny little boxes with a fancy ballpoint pen, the bastard, but Eames caught him looking more than once as Eames unveiled his ultra-plush eye mask and squished at the gel inside.
They boarded the plane, thankfully in First Class. Eames spared a grateful thanks to Arthur on behalf of his legs, knees, and other extended parts, and settled in. It wasn't as if he hadn't taken long flights before--he of course had, and with some frequency. But he usually had more warning for it, to collect things to help him settle into the unpleasant feeling of enclosure for extended periods of time. He drummed his fingers on his chair's console and watched the airline attendant go through his safety routine, idly assessing the other passengers in the cabin. As the plane began to ascend from the tarmac, he looked over, and Arthur was already asleep, the bastard, somehow bonelessly unconscious without even trying.
Eames took two flutes of champagne, one for him and one for Arthur--and now Eames--and settled in to watch some undoubtedly awful film about silly, pretty things refusing to be adults. He tried not to shift in his chair.
Eventually he did fall asleep, eye mask askew on on his face and rubbish airline blanket tangled in his legs. When he awoke again, they were apparently crossing over the brown expanse of California. Eames slowly removed his head from its uncomfortable angle resting against the swell of Arthur's right clavicle and looked out the window. It was the middle of the night; they were due to land some time in the evening in Honolulu. Going backwards in time was the most awful thing in the world.
Arthur absently brushed a hand over Eames' head, and Eames fixated on the slightly loosened half-windsor Arthur was sporting. Then his eyes swept upwards to meet Arthur's own, the tired, slight smile on his face and the hint that he'd been drinking evident on his breath.
Oh, Eames thought. Oh, dear.
He shifted upwards, pulling out of the ungainly sprawl he'd found himself in, stretching towards the ceiling and attempting to pop his back. The flight attendant, one of the three he'd flirted with shamelessly in the handful of hours he'd been awake, was there promptly asking if he'd like something to drink, or perhaps a snack? Eames ordered a scotch and soda and some crackers. When he turned to look again at Arthur, as if he was magnetised and Arthur was due north, Arthur had rested his chin on his lovely, pointy fingers and was watching him with something approaching amusement.
"You're too relaxed," Eames blurted out, desperately wishing he could slap a hand over his own mouth and keep from sounding more like a tosser.
Arthur only raised an eyebrow, and with his other hand, undid his top button.
Eames made a strangled noise and reached blindly for the drink that had, thank the christ himself, appeared at his fingertips.
"My father was in the Navy, and when I was growing up he was a Detective for the Honolulu Police Department," Arthur said, and Eames tried not to choke on his drink. "I have an older brother, Steve, and an older sister, Mary. Our surname is McGarrett--I guess I should get that out of the way now." He took a nonchalant sip from his gin and tonic.
In those handful of words Eames learned more about Arthur's family than he had in five years of semi-intentioned investigatory effort. Whatever they might say about Eames, Arthur had buckled down any hint of personal history from even the most thorough of checks.
"Ah," Eames said intelligently.
Arthur smiled again, a slight upward crook of his lovely mouth. "Steve, my brother who's in the hospital, went into Naval Intelligence. Mary--well, Mary does whatever the fuck she wants and it works for her most of the time." He swept his hands out as if to encompass all of himself. "And I became someone's forgotten dream."
"If your siblings are as terrifyingly competent as you, I despair of meeting them," Eames said with that disturbing streak of honesty that had plagued him in the last twenty-four hours. However, his lack of filter did make Arthur laugh, and Eames had learned long ago that he would debase himself in dismaying ways for the merest hint of Arthur's amusement.
Arthur's hand stole out to graze Eames' knee, and Eames started; but Arthur merely rearranged the several blankets Eames had somehow acquired so that they better covered the pair of them, knees tucked closely together. Arthur carefully threaded his arm around Eames' and clasped their hands together, and this time when he smiled Eames could feel his heart plummet to his heels and then rise once more, a crescendo of emotion and recognition that Eames had sworn off for good when Elizabeth Marten and then Benedict Caffyn had both broken his heart in rapid succession in primary school.
But there it was again, that feeling of helpless adoration for the slightest of things, overlaid upon Arthur as though Eames had not spent the better portion of his life ruthlessly tamping down any hint of such awful feelings.
Oh dear, Eames thought wretchedly.
The last number of hours on the plane were spent somewhere between getting blindingly inebriated and sneaking sadly unsubtle glances at the line of Arthur's jaw. By the time they deplaned, Eames had only sobered up to the point where he could effectively pretend to be sober, and had clenched an unresponsive hand around Arthur's wrist as they made their way to the car rental desk.
Arthur, bless his argyle socks, did not appear to notice Eames' compromised state.
When they finally departed the Honolulu airport in the Accord identical to the one they left behind in New York, Eames had regained some sense of himself. At least, enough to keep him from latching on to Arthur like a desperate child. He rolled down the window as they drove. The air smelled like seawater and lemons, an altogether different smell from anywhere else he had ever been; and in this he was including the Indian subcontinent, which had a similar climate but an altogether different scent about it.
Arthur's hair had wilted in the weather, and he hadn't bothered to fix it; instead it was curling delightfully around his ears and his forehead. At some point in the last half-hour he had discarded his waistcoat, removed his tie, and unbuttoned a further three buttons of his well-tailored shirt, revealing the sloping hint of a collarbone and a blindingly white undershirt. Eames thought he might faint from the sight. Unbuttoning Arthur was often his favorite of pastimes; for Arthur to do it himself was welcome surprise. Welcome, and fucking gorgeous.
"You might look to your right," Arthur said, amusement evident in his voice. "It's kind of a pretty view."
Eames wrenched his eyes away from the sight of Arthur in a state of semi-relaxation and his breath caught at the sight of blue, blue waters. "How could you have ever left?" he asked rhetorically, himself a frequent resident of a coastline but knowing sheer natural paradise when he saw it.
Arthur snorted softly. "Given enough reasons, a person might move to Antarctica," he said, explaining everything and nothing at all.
Eames found himself staring again at Arthur's profile; when they rounded a corner, his eyes flickered down to Arthur's right arm, where he was still wearing his watch. Reaching tentative fingers outward, he landed them light on Arthur's foream. When Arthur didn't flinch, only watched the road with the same focus to which he applied everything, Eames carefully undid the clasp of his watch and slid it off Arthur's hand. There was a tan line still visible, inexplicable from recent days spent in Munich and Jinan and Smethwick, but there nonetheless.
"Welcome home, Arthur," Eames said softly, and Arthur's hand reached for Eames' own.
They pulled up into the driveway of a large, comfortable house. No one else was there when they went inside, but there were signs of life--dishes in the sink, empty beer bottles on the counter, a stray pizza box. Arthur dropped his duffel on the floor and crossed the room to exit out a back door; Eames just took in the place.
It was difficult to imagine Arthur here, neat, lovely Arthur who seemed to be composed of right angles and pressed pants. The worn blankets covering the sofa, a haphazard pile of sandals by the door--it forced Eames to reassess his understanding of Arthur, changing from preference to, perhaps, reaction. Was it the older brother? Or mayhap the father that Arthur set himself against, creating an alternate persona unlike his origins. But even now Arthur didn't seem uncomfortable here. If he had made peace with it, whatever it was, it was some time ago.
Arthur returned minutes later from the porch with a displeased look upon his face. Eames kicked his own bag to the side and walked up to him, where he was looking at his phone in displeasure.
"What is it then, dear?" Eames asked, wanting to smudge his thumb across the space between Arthur's eyebrows.
"Steve just tried to AMA himself out of the hospital," Arthur said, with that slipshod balance between anger and worry that Eames had rarely ever heard directed towards anyone other than Cobb, and on one memorable occasion, himself. "Danny's sitting on him, but we should probably head over there now so I can deck him into submission."
"I see," said Eames, though he did nothing of the sort. "Who's this Danny, then?"
Arthur looked up, and his face cleared a bit. "He's the guy that made my idiot brother settle down," he said a little wryly, tucking his phone into his pocket and removing his cuff links to roll the sleeves of his shirt up his arms. Eames watched avidly, tamping down hunger. "Steve's never been the most...stable, let's say, of people. But--" and his face shuttered a bit, and Eames gave in to the impulse to place careful fingers on Arthur's forearm. To his gratification, Arthur covered Eames' hand with his own.
Arthur took a careful breath and said, "Our dad was murdered a couple of years ago. It was a guy Steve had been tracking in his work for Naval Intelligence--Hesse."
Eames sucked in a breath. He didn't wander into those circles, ever, not since he was a young, stupid boy with rocknrolla dreams. He didn't wander, but he did listen.
"Yeah. So he killed the old man out of sport, or for money, I'm not really sure. I never asked. Steve, the improbable jerk, was offered special dispensation from the Governor to hunt him down, and picked up Danny along the way. Danny was a detective for Honolulu PD--now he's Steve's partner on the state's special task force."
The way Arthur said the world made Eames think there was more to it than that, but it was hardly question time. "His keeper, then?"
Arthur's smile was a prize. "Something like that." His face dipped again and he unconsciously reached for his phone. "C'mon, we better go. Danny was already sounding a little crazy when I called."
Eames followed him back out to the car, taking one last glance at the house where Arthur had been a child. From there, to here. Eames had only rarely been caught so flat-footed; he couldn't wait to learn about what he'd been wrong on next.
***
The hospital was much the same as any of the dozen in which Eames had the unfortunate experience of residing.
They made their way up to the Critical Care Unit, and Eames waited patiently while Arthur had a quick word at the nurses' station. They were pointed to a room just down the hall, and as Arthur approached the tension returned to his stance. Eames hesitated a moment, and then swept his hand in a concerted gesture from Athur's shoulder to the small of his back. Arthur turned his head and shot him a look--somewhat unreadable, between wary and fond. Eames pressed his hand more firmly, and Arthur stepped half an inch closer.
"I'm sure he's fine," Eames all but whispered, and Arthur snorted. "I know he's fine," he said, sounding frustrated. "I just--he's thirty-five years old. He can't keep fucking himself up like this and expecting to get out scot free."
Eames nodded, like he thought he ought to, but somewhere inside his mind was a traitorous little voice that said, But darling, you get shot in the head for a living, are you truly one to talk after that awful job last year?
And then, because this trip was hardly complete without Arthur once more cutting through whatever screens Eames thought he had put between his mind and his face, Arthur snapped, "What I do is different. I only get shot at in dreams. Steve runs into bullets in real fucking life, okay?"
Following that pronouncement, he stomped into one of the private rooms, leaving Eames to windmill in the corridor wondering if every bloody thing must be written on his face for damnable Arthur to see now.
He followed, of course. As if he wouldn't.
The tableau, when he entered the hotel room, was lifted from some classical triptych--the veritable Steve McGarrett in the center, with two pinch-faced angels on either side of his hotel bed. Eames hovered in the door frame, trying to decide what sort of tactic he should take with the brother of the man he had been sort-of besotted with for the past number of years.
As it turned out, he needn't have bothered trying to figure such things out. The sheer force of the elder McGarrett brother was enough to eradicate any plans for controlling the situation.
"You must be Eames," Steve said from the bed, eyes visibly narrowing even from several feet of distance. "Lemme ask you a question--Arthur says he's in 'information distribution.' On a scale of one to bullshit, how thoroughly should I investigate your background to figure out just what the fuck you're doing with my baby brother?"
"Steve!" Arthur hissed, dropping Steve's hand on the bed.
"Right--well--" Eames started, not entirely sure whether to head in the entirely opposite direction or commend Arthur for discovering such a elegantly neutral phrase for their particular brand of espionage.
"Okay," said a thundering voice from the gentleman on the left side of the bed, "let's just get this one straight right the fuck-all now. There will be no interrogating of boyfriends while in the hospital bed. There will be no threats of violence from the hospital bed. There will be no, and I repeat, no, stressful proclamations of any fucking kind from the hospital bed. So take a knee right now, McGarrett, before I tell Dr. Kealoha how that vein in your forehead is trying to form its own zip code."
"Danny," Steve protested, but a hand landed squarely in the center of his chest and pinned him gently to the bed.
"Nada," Danny said threateningly, and Arthur crossed his arms and stuck out his fucking tongue at his older brother. "Let's try this again," Danny continued. "How about a 'Hi, I'm Steve, Arthur's nosy overprotective brother, you must be the mysterious long-term boyfriend he uses to avoid coming home for Thanksgiving!'"
Steve and Arthur raised the same eyebrow, at the same time, at Danny.
"Now that's just eerie," Danny said.
"You have no idea," Eames said fervently. "Also, Arthur, how is you've never deigned to inform me that I'm your stock familial excuse?"
Arthur faltered for a moment, but rallied as he ran a hand through his hair. "You've stuck around the longest," he hedged. "And you're the only one I've mentioned more than once. Some people," he said, glaring at Steve, "infer too much."
"Oh, I think I've inferred exactly the right amount," Steve said, eyes squinting in some oddly McGarrett way in Arthur's general direction.
"I agree with your brother," Eames said before checking his own mouth, earning Arthur's full-on glare swinging in his direction.
"Ooo-kay," Danny said, waving his hands around in such a fashion as everyone was forced to turn towards him--if only to avoid being smacked in the face. "Not that this isn't a touching family reunion, but Arthur, how about we give you a minute to catch up with your brother. Eames, No-First-Name-I-Bet-You-Have-An-Interpol-Record, let's go get some coffee."
Torn a moment between staying near Arthur and rather wanting to escape the situation, Eames agreed only after Arthur had waved a hand at him in a dismissive manner and turned back towards his brother. Danny clapped a hand on his shoulder and led him from the room. "Now, as a courtesy I'm not going to try and fingerprint you in the cafeteria, but I gotta say, Steve will probably hunt you down if you hurt Arthur, and he's already got a couple of manhunts on his plate. So let's make nice for ten minutes, and then you and the prodigal brother can get on your merry, possibly criminal way, sound good?"
Eames nodded. It seemed the thing to do.
In all truth, coffee with Danny wasn't so bad. They carefully avoided talking about anything having to do with work, and instead discussed ideal pizza toppings on a New York slice and the sad lack of proper schmear anywhere other than the Eastern seaboard. When they returned to the hotel room, Arthur was sitting in a chair by the bed, his hands steepled, and Steve was resting with his eyes closed and the lights lowered.
Arthur looked up when they returned and rose to meet them outside the door. "I don't think he's slept in the last twelve hours," he said, worry evident in his voice. "Danny, did you nail the shithead that did this? He's not going to rest until the guy's behind bars."
Danny made a face. "Chin and Kono are out pounding the pavement," he said like he wanted to apologize. "We won't be able to put anything concrete on him until we have a matching sketch for the BOLO, and the witness has been unconscious since she was attacked. We're up shit creek."
Arthur blew out a frustrated sigh. "Okay. I--we--can stay with him if you need to get back to Grace, or the department."
Danny shook his head. "Grace is with her mom this week, I get her next week. But--look, I need to be here as much as you do, but I'll make you a deal. If you can stay here until maybe the morning, I'll go home, get a shower, a couple of z's and then be back bright and early."
Arthur was already nodding. "You look like shit, Danny. Go home, we've got this."
Danny barked out a laugh. "Thanks, Arthur, you're real fucking kind." His eyes were smiling as he said it, though, something like relief showing in them. Eames stepped closer to Arthur, trying to provide a unified front. It said something, that Danny trusted Arthur even suspecting his more...questionable legal choices.
Eames knew how to turn a delicate phrase himself.
They sat there all night, betting M&M's over hands of poker in the half-light of the table lamp. Around midnight, Arthur slipped out of his shoes and slid his feet into Eames' lap, and Eames played one-handed. The other kneaded Arthur's feet until he was a boneless pile of well-tailored clothes on the other side of the cheap table that separated them. Finally, an hour or so later, Arthur's eyes started to slip closed. Eames gently took his poker hand from his lax fingers, checking momentarily to ascertain whether his count of Arthur's cards was correct or not (it of course was), and flicked off the light, settling back into his own chair.
The shadow from the car park's fluorescents cast a sallow glow over Arthur's sharp features, and Eames considered the man sitting across from him. Twenty-four hours ago, they stood in a nameless suburb in a sleepy town working in a field that perhaps fifty people in the world knew existed. Today, nearly everything he'd thought he'd known about this man had been turned out and replaced with new, far more interesting truths.
Eames had always thought of their "relationship," if one might even be inclined to so use the term, as something of a particularly vigorous and satisfying game of pigtail-pulling. He delighted in getting a rise out of Arthur; Arthur seemed to enjoy thwarting his attempts at familiarity and making Eames work harder than he otherwise tended to. Most of the time it ended in athletic, mutually enjoyable sex and the occasional amusing text message every few weeks.
But if Eames wasn't lying to himself--and no matter what he did to other people, he generally made a habit of truth-telling within the confines of his own consciousness--he would have to admit that he had put something of his heart in the bargain for a fair amount of time now.
Years, if he were being honest.
He had simply never thought, even in his most idle fantasies, that Arthur might feel something in return.
Eames shifted, ghosting a hand over Arthur's socked feet where they remained in his lap. Clearly there were emotions now. Something in him had prompted him to attend to Arthur on this journey; something in Arthur had allowed him to come. However they had gotten here, things had changed between them, and Eames had made the decision to see it through regardless of how it concluded.
Of course, he dearly hoped it concluded with them continuing on together in all things. These brief glimpses of this other Arthur, this younger brother and Navy brat and unbuttoned, un-waistcoated version of Arthur were far too personally destructive to ever return to their previous arrangement with any measure of satisfaction.
Eames let his eyes close on the sight of Arthur, mouth partly open, lovely swathe of skin barely visible from the opening in his finely striped shirt, and fell asleep with no dream to follow.
They didn't wake until Danny returned in the morning, shaking them awake warily as if he were somehow experienced with Arthur's little quirk of attempting to disarm people whilst half-asleep. Eames ran a hand blearily over his face, scraping stubble, and regretfully pushed Arthur's feet from his lap.
Danny looked better for his rest, freshly showered with a laptop bag strung over his shoulder. He picked up the coffee tray he had sensibly placed on the bed where Steve remained asleep and offered it to the pair of them. Arthur and Eames both took a cup gratefully.
"So now I get to tell you that you both look like shit, go home," Danny said without preamble, perching on the hospital bed and resting a hand on Steve's blanketed ankle.
Arthur snorted. "And you wonder why I don't come home for Thanksgiving."
Danny raised his eyebrows. "Arthur, I can safely say that I've never wondered why you didn't come home. I just got to see the results of your occasional visits, and let me tell you, Steve winding himself up chasing rumours from the other side of the world isn't exactly conducive to a restful night."
Eames watched Arthur groan softly and bury his head in his hands, soft strands of hair spilling over his fingers. He mumbled something that Eames strained to hear.
"I'm sorry, what was that, I don't speak the reprobate brother dialect," Danny said, cupping a hand around his ear comically.
Arthur raised his head, but spoke through his fingers. "I will come home this winter."
Danny smiled. It was a very satisfied smile. "Excellent. Now go home, get some sleep, get each other off, whatever. You're not allowed back in the hospital until evening visiting hours."
Arthur didn't protest; Eames was surprised, but shuffled them out of there, shaking Danny's hand and heading back to the car.
They got back to the house swiftly enough, and Eames trailed after Arthur's breadcrumbs of expensive menswear. A button-up, a sock, a belt, an a-shirt. He slipped out of his own things easily enough, and without a second's thought followed Arthur beneath the duvet, feeling Arthur's arms slide over him to be the larger spoon, and shut his eyes to the sound of waves crashing outside the window.
When Eames woke up again, a ruddy spear of late afternoon light cut through the window, lighting the room off the pale colour of the walls. Arthur wasn't there, and Eames slipped from the bed through the quiet house. The clothes had been removed from the corridor, and Eames spared a wistful thought for the entirely platonic show he received last night.
Well. Perhaps not entirely platonic.
In the kitchen, which seemed a natural place to gravitate towards, there was a pot of coffee made, some type of sugared doughnut next to the coffeemaker in a paper carton, and a single empty mug with a packet of English Breakfast resting atop it like a question. Eames smiled, finger reaching out to trace "E-N-G" but opting, ultimately, for the coffee.
He filled the mug and spooned sugar inside, wandering over to the kitchen table. It looked as though someone had been to visit while he was sleeping; as he recalled, the table had only featured an empty fruit bowl and a handful of nearly done candles. Now there were several stacks of files gracing its surface, a closed laptop and a rather expensive looking electronic reader resting on what seemed to be witness reports from the Honolulu Police Department.
Lacking anything else to do, and being a rather nosy man--for a living and a hobby--Eames sat down to read.
An hour, or easily more, passed by before there was a clattering from the back porch. Eames looked up from the file he was reviewing, peering through the not-quite-right reading glasses he had filched from aside table in the front room to witness a sight he would not easily forget.
Arthur entered, wearing a wetsuit, of all deeply thrilling things, peeled down over his lovely chest just shy of his belly button. Water lightly coursed from the loose tangle of hair he pushed from his eyes, running down the plane of his torso and forcing Eames to stare, pole-axed, at the sight of Arthur's hardened nipples, the dark trail of hair leading towards his very tight wetsuit, and the defined lines of his strong thighs.
The ankle closure of the wetsuit fell about two inches too short. Eames wanted to lick there. He thought he might hyperventilate instead.
Arthur, seemingly unaware of the devastating image he made, set his surfboard---his surfboard, my god, Eames would never be able to watch Point Break again without thinking of this moment--against the side of the house and shook out his hair on the other side of the door frame before stepping in.
"What's wrong?" he said, tilting his head to the side. "Also, you have powdered sugar all over your mouth. How many of those malasadas did you eat?"
Dumbly, Eames looked down at the carton of doughnuts to find that, in his absent exploration into the circumstances surrounding the elder McGarrett brother's traumatic accident, he had indeed eaten more than half of the things.
Damn. He usually had more self-control.
He looked up again, watching Arthur peel down his wetsuit to reveal equally tight swim trunks, and revised his opinion of his restraint.
"Darling, come here, I think I might ravish you against this table," Eames said thoughtfully, setting his papers aside.
Arthur snorted. "You're cute in those glasses, but you're not that cute," which was the most ungracious lie, as Eames could see everything in the swim trunks Arthur was all but poured into. Eames would clearly have to retain that newfound knowledge of Arthur's affection for eyewear for another time.
He rose, setting the glasses atop his papers, and caught Arthur's arm, turning him around and pushing him against the wall. "I suppose this wall will do," he said, fitting his mouth to Arthur's. Arthur's arms came around his shoulders, and Eames swept his hands up and down Arthur's wet back, coming to rest upon the swell of Arthur's ass. He smelled of the ocean and clean sweat, and that particular smell Eames had come to associate with his pillows in the morning after Arthur had left for another job. Arthur made a gratifyingly desperate sound against Eames, and Eames let out a hungry sigh as he attempted to lift Arthur upwards.
The scene was momentarily arrested by a small, pointed cough that sounded quite a bit like a laugh. Arthur froze and turned; Eames had little choice but to follow, as that's where Arthur's lips were, after all.
A very beautiful woman, largely nude but for a bikini that barely lived up to its name, was at the door where Arthur had been moments ago, haloed in the evening sunlight and smirking irrepressibly.
"If I had realized that wearing your high school wetsuit would get you molested, I would have made you wear one of Steve's," she said, placing her surfboard against the door atop Arthur's and resting her hands on her hips.
Arthur groaned. "He's a giant," which was true, Eames suspected anything of Steve's would look ridiculous on Arthur knowing him only from a bed. Arthur pushed Eames away, but in a manner that involved a quick grope. Eames didn't allow his hand to stray from Arthur's swimsuit until Arthur physically returned his hand to him with a warning glare. How ineffective.
"Kono, this is Eames," Arthur said, moving out of reach of Eames' hands. "Eames, this is Kono. She works with my brother."
"And he used to date my sister," she said with mischievous helpfulness.
"In high school," Arthur protested. "Lena and I dated in high school"
"Shall I make you my new best friend?" Eames said hopefully.
Kono laughed with her whole body. "Oh, I like him," she said to Arthur. "Maybe I'll dig up that prom picture of you and Lena."
Eames said "Yes!" just as Arthur shouted "No!"
Arthur rolled his eyes and wiped his feet on the mat before crossing the room to collect his phone. He had a message--Eames had heard it beep while he had been reading--and brought it up to his ear to listen.
"You know, you're not as mysterious as I thought you'd be," Kono said as she toweled out her hair and sprayed off her feet using the hose on the porch.
Eames leaned against the wall where he had just pressed Arthur and lifted a shoulder. "I suppose it's hard to be mysterious whilst wearing house clothes," he said.
She grinned. She really was quite lovely. "Yeah, that's true," she said. "But I mean--I've known Arthur since we were kids. He's been back, like, a few times since I started working with his brother, and any time someone asked him about what he was doing he'd say something like, 'Oh, I'm meeting someone for a job, gotta go,' or 'I need to get back to someone, catch you later Steve.'" She eyed him critically. "And yours was the only name he mentioned more than once. So yeah, mysterious, but not as mysterious as I thought."
Kono pulled on a long pair of shorts and threaded a shirt over her head. Eames ran a hand through his hair and let his eyes fall on Arthur, who was furiously thumbing something into his phone.
"He was just as opaque about his life here," Eames offered finally. "I didn't even know he had siblings until his brother was in hospital."
Kono's smile was lopsided. "Yeah, well. It's understandable. The McGarrett family is pretty fucked up. Arthur was the only point of contact between Steve and their sister Mary for, like, years. And Arthur wasn't exactly phoning home every week."
Eames followed her to the kitchen; Arthur disappeared into the room they had slept in the night before, and Eames let his eyes stray to his lovely backside before turning back to Kono, who held out a Kona Longboard lager with a knowing grin. Eames most definitely did not blush, and tried for a leer instead; from her look, it didn't work terribly well.
They sat in the living room, Kono curling into the sofa and Eames sitting on the lounger. He took a long pull--it wasn't bad. In fact it was rather similar to the light lagers from India he'd had when he lived more regularly in Mombasa.
"Mrs. McGarrett died in a car accident when they were all kids," Kono continued, and Eames blinked away his surprise.
"Both parents?" he said. "That's..."
Kono rested her head on her hand. "Yeah. They haven't exactly had it easy, you know? Mr. McGarrett shipped them all off to the mainland like a month after. Steve was sent to some uncle on the East coast, and Mary and Arthur were with their grandmother in California. And then Arthur came back here after Mary turned eighteen and ran off. He was just a kid when it all happened, and came back to live with Mr. McGarrett for like four years before he took off for the mainland too." She shook her head a little, drinking her beer.
"What--well. I don't suppose you know what he did next," Eames asked, hurting a bit that he'd never know these essential parts of Arthur, eager to know as much as this woman might tell him.
"Nope. No one does, not even Steve. And Steve was a dick for a really long time, too. I mean, I didn't really know him then, but he joined the Navy like their dad and didn't come back to Hawaii until their dad was murdered. Mary didn't come back for the funeral, and Arthur did, but he didn't talk to anyone, just stayed for the funeral and the burial and then took off again. And then Mary came back. I think--and I'm just guessing, because I don't really know--but I think Arthur told her everything that happened, and convinced her to come back." Kono's eyes scanned around the room, like she was remembering the last couple of years in a handful of moments. "So Mary and Steve finally talked again, and Steve started reaching out to Arthur. Arthur started coming back once or twice, and they all figured some shit out, but..."
"Some things are still broken," Eames finished.
She smiled sadly. "And how, man."
They sat quietly for a moment before Arthur returned from the guest room. He was wearing board shorts and a loose fitting t-shirt, and if Eames had thought the wetsuit was the most wonderful thing he might see today he was clearly mistaken. He opened his mouth to comment on it, and the clear lack of styling product in Arthur's lovely hair, but stopped when he saw the displeased turn of Arthur's mouth. "What is it?" he said instead.
"Danny called earlier, said Steve was cleared from immediate head trauma," he said. "But I just called back and Steve is trying to AMA himself again, even though Dr. Kealoha wants to keep him another forty-eight hours for observation for internal bleeding."
Kono started cursing. "That fucker, he fell off a construction rig from sixty feet and hit a steel shipping crate! He broke three ribs!"
Arthur threw up his hands. "I know! We have to get back over there, Eames, I don't think Danny can keep him there by himself."
Eames nodded. "Of course. Shall I go start the car?"
"Yeah," Arthur said. "Let me just put on some shoes." He slid a pair of flip flops onto his feet, just slightly too large for him, and Eames was distracted for a moment by the visible presence of Arthur's toes in footwear.
"Eames!" Arthur said sharply. "Car! Go now!"
"Yes dear," Eames said automatically. "And I know it's not the time, but I just thought I should inform you that this is the longest we've ever been in the same place without having sex. In case you should like to rectify that later."
"Car!" Arthur bellowed, but Eames could see that some of the tension in his shoulders had minutely relaxed. Which was of course his purpose; that, and prompting the idea of another sort of stress relief. He was only human, after all, and Arthur's toes.
He grabbed a pair of trousers from his bag, still by the door, and fumbled the key into the ignition, turning it over. As the car hummed, he shucked off his pyjama bottoms and drew on the trousers, running a hand over his plain shirt and another hand through his fickle hair. It wasn't at all neat, but it would do, he supposed.
The sun was setting before him as Kono and Arthur left the house, Arthur locking the door behind him. Kono's arms were full of papers, and Eames opened the door of her car for her. "Oh, by the way," Eames said, "I just thought you should know that one of the witness statements reported seeing a gentleman dumping a wrench in a barrel near the construction site where Steve fell. She wasn't very detailed, but it was a white man in his mid-thirties that sounded an awful lot like the George Harris fellow described in the file about the Portomento smuggling ring, including the bit about him missing a pinkie finger."
Kono stared at him, mouth slightly ajar. "You--you read the witness reports? And my files?"
Eames shrugged. "Well, you were gone for over an hour," he said apologetically.
"I--but--wait, George Harris?" she blurted, looking as though her mind were turning furiously.
"Yes, as I said, according to your file he's the primary shipping--"
"--contact for the Pacific Rim, yeah, I know, but we thought he'd been deported back to--listen, I have to go," she said hurriedly, slamming the door of her car and running around to the driver's side.
"Eames! Stop bothering Kono, let's go!" Arthur said sharply from the car.
"Right, coming, darling," Eames said, waving at Kono as she peeled out of the driveway and down the private road. He got into the car and smiled at Arthur, who was raising his "not amused" eyebrow at Eames. "I think I just helped in police work, Arthur. I feel a bit dirty to be on this side of the law."
Arthur rolled his eyes and backed out of the drive.
At the hospital for the second day in a row, not much had changed. Danny looked once more tired and pinched, his tie loose around his neck, slumped in a chair by Steve's bed. Steve was watching the television with a mutinous look on his face.
"You tried to AMA again?" Arthur said severely, without preamble.
Danny snorted, one hand thrown over his eyes. "Yeah. While I was out in the hall talking to Chin, the fucker unhooked himself from the machines and tried to hobble out the door in his patient gown."
Steve's face tightened further, and he shifted in what looked to be a painful fashion in his bed. "I'm fine," he insisted.
"You are not fine!" Arthur shouted. "You are the antithesis of fine! Just because they said that you probably don't have brain damage does not mean you are fine!"
"And I for one am not convinced that they're right," Danny said, coming to rest his elbows on his knees, "because you're pretty goddamned brain damaged to me."
"Steve," Arthur said, and something in his voice sounded like the edge of a broken mirror, sharp and just this side of shattering. "Please, please, I am asking you as one of my two remaining family members on this planet, please stay in this fucking hospital bed until the doctor clears you to go. Please."
Eames caught his breath. He was witnessing something he wasn't sure he had a right to see. But Arthur had been so open about everything else, as if all the shutters he'd put to his life in their line of work had fallen away, that Eames thought perhaps Arthur was letting Eames see him like this so he'd understand what he was getting into. So he'd know if he wanted to stick around.
Eames stepped closer, put his hand in the small of Arthur's back. Arthur was shaking with tension, a painful scowl on his face, gaze not wavering from his brother. Steve, for his part, ran through a dozen different minute variations of the same scowl as Arthur's but finally he fell back, looking defeated.
"All right," he said hollowly.
Arthur sagged a little, but immediately rallied himself. He reached a hand back, taking Eames' into his own. "Thank you," he said. "I really don't want to get another phone call saying you're trying to stage an escape. My life is stressful enough as it is."
Steve made a small, protesting noise, eyes firmly affixed to the television above their heads.
Arthur sighed. "Fine. Be a bitch about it, don't talk to me, I don't care. Just don't fucking move." He turned and went out into the hall, tugging Eames along with him.
They walked in silence down the hall, hand in hand like children, until they reached the end of the hall where the vending machines were placed. Arthur stopped, turning to maneuver Eames against the wall, bringing their linked hands up between them. He fitted himself against Eames, listing slightly so that he fell beneath Eames' chin, and Eames let his other hand curve around Arthur's shoulders. He made some soothing noises, just a soft rumble of nonsense as Arthur breathed harshly against him for several minutes.
"I heard Kono tell you about my dad," Arthur said finally, and Eames fought not to tense up, sweeping a calming hand up and down Arthur's spine. "It's okay, it's easier that she told you instead of me. It all pretty much sucked, for a long time. I was the youngest, and when our grandmother died there was nowhere for me to go except back home."
"To your dad," Eames said. He felt Arthur nod against his chest.
"He was never the same after Mom died," Arthur said. "I don't remember it that well, I was only a kid when the car accident happened, but I know how it felt. And then he sent us all away, and became something...broken. More broken, by himself for all those years. He didn't know what to do with me when I came back, so he worked all the time, and I just tried to get through high school and get out of there. When you're a teenager, and you're stuck in a situation like that--the only thing I ever wanted was to be nothing like him."
"And did you succeed?" Eames asked into the fine hair of Arthur's temple.
Arthur snorted. "More than I could have ever dreamed."
Eames waited a moment, and then asked, "Do you regret it?"
Arthur's fingers tightened on Eames' own, but said, "No. Or, not really. I don't regret the life I made. What we do--there's nothing like it in the world. Nothing. It's better than anything else I could have done. But...I wish I'd been there for Mary. And I wish I hadn't resented Steve for so long, for not being there, for going to the Naval Academy and never coming back. I get it now, but I didn't for a long time. It felt like our dad had pushed us away, and that Steve pretended we didn't exist. When Mary went to Chicago, I was by myself at fourteen with a parent who couldn't look at me in the eyes. It was impossible not to be angry."
Eames made a noise of assent.
Arthur pushed back, looking Eames in the eye. Arthur's own eyes were red, but not wet, and Eames felt something in him give way at this Arthur, Arthur who was telling him every truth he'd ever had and trusting Eames with them all. He rubbed his thumb across Arthur's palm, watching each inhalation and exhalation Arthur made and trying not to shake with the gravity of it all.
"But you know," Arthur said, his voice steady, "if all of that hadn't happened, if I hadn't left for the mainland at eighteen and gone to Brown, if I hadn't taken a semester in Paris and became Miles Bonnefort's student, if I hadn't met Mal and her fiance and if I hadn't learned how to build worlds in the space of a thought, I never would have met you. So I don't think I can regret it, you see."
"I don't know, darling," Eames said roughly, their hands gripped between them. "I think we might've found a way."
Arthur's smile was small, but with a fiercely defiant edge to it. "Mr. Eames," he said softly, looking nothing like the man Eames had fallen in love with, but everything like the man Eames knew him to be, "I think you should know that I'm in love with you. I have been, for some time."
"Arthur," he said, and reeled Arthur in close, snogging him within an inch of his life and not caring if they were visible from the nurse's station.
Arthur went pliant against him, and Eames--who thought he had been very good at not fucking Arthur against whatever available surface was present over the last two days--mentally cursed everything about this situation that was not a bed, or at the very least a private toilet. He wanted to unpeel Arthur from his clothes, from his words, from everything that was not Arthur panting messily at his skin.
"Please do not make me arrest you for public indecency," Danny said pleadingly. Arthur and Eames broke apart. Danny was standing in the hallway, a dollar bill in one waving hand and the other clamped firmly over his eyes.
"I would really like this whole business of interruptions to stop," Eames said seriously to Arthur, fingers unable to leave the flushed column of his throat where it made Arthur shiver pleasantly to his touch.
"Give us a minute, Danny," Arthur said, swiping the note from Danny's hand. "I'll get you a soda, okay?"
"Dr. Pepper, please," Danny said, hand not leaving his eyes until he had about-faced, double-timing it down the corridor, tie flapping over his shoulder.
Arthur grinning, and then laughed, pressing Eames back into the wall and resting his forehead against Eames shoulder.
When they returned, a bit more put together and with Danny's soda in hand, not much had changed. Steve had angled himself awkwardly on the bed, body directed away from Danny, and Danny was staring blankly at the television, looking lost inside his own head. Eames handed him the can, which he took absently, cracking it open but not drinking from it.
"Danny, do you want to go home? Eames and I can stay tonight," Arthur said gently, hands resting in the pockets of his shorts.
Danny's eyes flickered over automatically to Steve's mulish form on the bed and his eyes tightened. "Yeah. I'll go back to the house, come back in the morning. Call me if he does anything stupid."
Arthur raised an eyebrow, and Danny shook his head ruefully. "You're right, that was a dumb thing to say. Look, I'm going to go meet Gracie and Rachel for dinner, but after that I'll be back at the house. The doctor is supposed to come in for rounds or whatever at like nine a.m. I don't know if you want to stick around for that or not but he's supposed to get another CT really early before that. He's gonna be grumpy, and they're not letting him have caffeine, so just be prepared."
"Stop talking about me like I'm not in the room," Steve said angrily, punching the pillow and letting out an awful chesty cough.
"I'll stop talking about you when you start acting like the adult I know you are, somewhere deep down inside," Danny retorted. "God, you're worse than Grace when she's sick."
Steve didn't say anything, and Arthur clapped Danny on the shoulder as he left.
"Do you need anything?" Arthur asked Steve, but Steve wouldn't answer him. Arthur shook his head, and he and Eames took up the same places they'd occupied the night before. Eames started to shuffle the cards, and they went back into playing poker like no time had passed at all. Well. This time Arthur was playing footsie with him under the table, his agile, newly-revealed feet doing their best to wind Eames up.
Not that it took much, really.
"You were in Seville last year," Steve said suddenly from the bed. Eames looked over, but Steve wasn't watching them, just staring at the ceiling.
"Good to know your confidential informants are living up to their paychecks," Arthur replied mildly, dropping a card and taking another.
"You were working out of a office building in la Negrilla," Steve continued in a monotone, as if he were reciting facts from a report. "There were two others on your team, and you did prep for ten days before making a move, but then you disappeared and there were no corroborating reports to indicate anything happened."
"Perhaps that means I completed my job successfully," Arthur said.
"Arthur," Steve said, and his voice sounded strained, "what do you do, on these jobs? I've never figured it out. You don't steal art, or things; you don't work for any of the crime syndicates, you don't sell anything on the open market. I've been tracking you for years, I know you're doing something shady, but I can't figure it the fuck out!"
"Someone might take that as a hint to stop looking, then," and Arthur sounded less mild, more agitated with a side of constipation. Eames reached one hand down and clasped Arthur's ankle, pulling it up to rest on his own knee, rubbing the skin there soothingly.
"Stop feeling up my brother in front of me," Steve complained.
"No," Eames said, setting down his cards to shuffle the deck one-handed. Steve made a disbelieving noise.
That made Arthur smile. "Steve, we've had this conversation or variations on it every time I've seen you in the last two years. Stop asking. I'm not going to tell you what I do. You wouldn't like it if I did."
"Fuck you," Steve said harshly.
"No, big brother, fuck you," Arthur said with a little heat. "I don't have to explain shit to you. Just because I didn't go into the Navy to become some perfect military drone doesn't mean my choices weren't right for me."
"You don't explain anything to me!" Steve roared, and immediately started coughing wetly, wracking his body against the bed.
"Fuck, Steve!" Arthur said frantically, rising from his chair to press Steve back into the bed. "Eames, go get the nurse--"
"On it," Eames said grimly, running out into the hallway and grabbing the first uniform-clad person he could find. The room was soon flooded with people, and as they took over, Eames collected Arthur and they huddled in a corner, watching them swarm Steve who had gone pale with exertion.
"I shouldn't have let him get riled up, fuck, I should have just shut the fuck up, why did I do that, god, if something happens--" Arthur babbled, hands latched on Eames' forearm.
"He's going to be fine, he's as stubborn as you, isn't he?" Eames said, keeping him close.
Arthur looked up at him, eyes wild. "He's such a bastard but he's my brother,, Eames."
"I know," Eames said. "I know, Arthur. He'll be fine."
An hour later, after they'd been directed to a nearby waiting room, one of the doctors came to fetch them. "He's been sedated," she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes, "and he's ruptured the stitches on his torso, but we've ruled out a punctured lung, so if he can get some rest he should be fine for now."
"Thank you," Eames said for the both of them, and led an unresisting Arthur back to the room. Steve was asleep, and Arthur drifted over to the side of the bed, resting a careful hand on Steve's leg. "You have to get better, you asshole," he whispered. "Stop doing this to me, to other people. You don't have to know everything to care about someone. Sometimes you just have to have faith in them."
Eames leaned against the door and crossed his arms, watching the bowed line of Arthur's back in the half-light.
"I love you too," he said.
"I know you do," Arthur replied, and when he turned his face was wet.
part I | part II | part III | masterpost | notes