fic: darling
Alright, SO, somehow this story started out as a joke and then became weirdly PRECIOUS to me. Originally, I just wanted to write a ghost story. This story has no ghosts, but this is still kind of a ghost story.
THIS IS ALSO A STORY WHERE EAMES PINES. This is a story where Eames pines like A FUCKING FOREST.
ALSO, I did a whole metric fuck-ton of googling British manors and shit for Eames to live in (SIGH, sometimes I just look at my life and DESPAIR) and then I realized the reason I didn’t like any of them was because, in my mind, Eames totally lives in Jennings Hall. The problem is that Jennings Hall is in Vermont and, in my mind, Eames does not live in Vermont, so one of these things had to move. So Jennings is now in Durham, deal with it. (FUN FACT TO KNOW AND SHARE: Jennings is the inspiration for The Haunting of Hill House and is, supposedly, actual facts haunted. I’ve hung out in that building and, I have to say, sometimes that place just does not want you in it. If a building could be sullen and bitchy and mopey, this one would be, and that is why I picked it.)
And let’s just get this out of the way now: there’s a fucking Eliot reference, for which I apologize PROFUSELY, goddamn. But, like, you know how in 10 Things I Hate About You Julia-Stiles’s-Friend is like “Shakespeare and I are involved” well, that is the way I am with The Waste Land. If I’m writing a story about “snow” and “forgetting,” then, man, shit’s just gonna happen, alright? But there is no excuse for the fact that this is also slightly influenced by Slavoj Žižek’s analysis of David Lynch’s films. You can watch the clip of The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema that I’m talking about here and I recommend it because it’s SO RIDICULOUS and I have a kind of weird crush on Žižek (and by 'crush' I mean I really really want to hear him say 'you're despicable'). I swear to god, every story I write in this fandom winds up with me looking like a fucking douche captain, I give the fuck up.
PS: this story has a mini-playlist that I was listening to when I was writing it, available right here
Title: Darling
Pairing: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4000
Summary: “It’s not real,” Arthur says. “Whatever you think you’re doing, it’s not real.”
“Of course,” Eames says, “but that’s only true for certain values of ‘real.’”
Warnings: Basically, this is a ghost story. But with no literal ghosts. But with a lot of dead bodies.
Notes: Thanks as always to your__design, especially for limiting me to JUST ONE Wuthering Heights joke. Still, I should mention this whole thing essentially reads like a Brontë parody. She tried, but she couldn’t stop me. It’s not her fault, it’s all me. Also, I know the Eskimo-words-for-snow thing is almost universally accepted to be an urban legend. It’s just… METAPHORICALLY, YOU KNOW? Whatever! Cut text and title from “And Darling” by Tegan and Sara. OBVIOUS.
EDIT: NOW WITH AWESOME ART!! thanks so much sashyasavvy! *loves it forever*
“It starts with: ‘dreams are for those who cannot endure reality; who are not strong enough for reality.’
It ends with: ‘reality is for those who are not strong enough to endure, to confront their dreams.’”
- Slavoj Žižek-
They have a routine.
He’s too weak now to leave the bed, so Eames brings him tea and toast in the mornings and at nights, tries to make him eat more than that and can’t.
“It’s the chamomile,” he says. “It’s your favorite, Darling.”
And Darling smiles, his face tired and pale, almost unrecognizable, almost inhuman. Papier-mâché, Eames thinks, like a mask. He half expects the skin to flake off when he touches it. At night Eames curls around him anyway, smoothes a callused hand over his shoulder, and every night he’s a little less warm.
“It’ll be better tomorrow,” Eames says, every night.
Every night, Darling says, “I trust you.”
*
It’s been a long winter.
When Darling is awake, Eames reads to him. He does all the voices. Mostly, though, Darling sleeps and Eames goes for walks.
It’s strange, he thinks, how the snow doesn’t seem all that cold. It smoothes the hills into uniform blind spots until Eames stumbles tracks across them. He can never find the footprints the next morning, but they’re always there to help him find his way back to the house in the afternoon, and that’s the only bit that’s important.
Sometimes it feels colder in the house than it does outside. It makes Eames think of a poem, he can’t quite remember how it goes. Something about memory and desire, and the Starnbergersee. ‘Winter kept us warm,’ he thinks and then, what comes next? Something… forgetful? Something about sledding, something about mountains. It would be appropriate, he thinks. If only he could remember how it goes. Sledding, he thinks. ‘Hold on tight. And down we went.’
He’s repeating the bits he can remember over to himself when he sees the body, lying curled up in the drifts, not like a cold animal, but like a sleeping child. It’s a man.
Eames kneels down and pokes. Eyes open under snow-dusted lashes, slowly, shaking off soft flakes. It seems familiar, half-remembered.
“Hello,” Eames says. He brushes snow off the man’s face. “Hello, Arthur.”
“Hi,” Arthur says.
“Did I know you were coming?” Eames asks, and doesn’t help Arthur get to his feet.
“I hope so,” Arthur says. He looks down his front, frowns, and brushes away the snow.
Eames watches him and doesn’t say anything.
Arthur looks up at Eames. He’s not wearing any gloves and his coat is more fashion than function. “Can I stay for awhile?” Arthur asks. His bare hands are paused above the lapels of his coat, in between motions.
Eames can see the bluish tinge to his fingernails, but it’s the delicacy of Arthur’s wrists that decides him; he had forgotten how birdlike, how hollow they seemed. They seem like an older man’s wrists.
Eames nods.
They don’t talk on the way back, except Arthur says, “By the way, you were completely mangling that poem.”
“I know,” Eames says, and smiles.
*
They approach the house through the ruined stone pillars, no gate in between just a passage that faces out into the open fields, the house waiting just around the bend, obscured by dark trees. On the other side, somewhere nestled below the hills, there is a graveyard, but it’s already too dark to see it from this far away. It is dark, very dark at night, and night comes early here. All these trees, Eames thinks, and the mountains. Sometimes it seems that the hills will close over the house. There is a town somewhere, Eames remembers, but he never sees it. Sometimes he forgets it’s there and there is only the house.
Eames doesn’t know a lot about architecture or the house itself; that’s not his job and he’s not the oldest son, he was never supposed to inherit. It was built around a time when nothing was left undecorated, when every house had a Gothic overindulgence that appeals to him - towers and buttresses and wooden lace, but still made of purposeful stones that slot firmly together and floorboards that even now don’t creak as much as they rightly should, smoothed into submission. Still, there is something about the house that strikes him as unkind. A psychiatrist would say it was his upbringing that he was thinking of but Eames knows himself well enough to know that he has no problems with that. If his parents were a little cold it was fine because their disinterest suited him, but he’d have to agree that the house reminds him of his parents, just a little: the high-chin of the balcony, the cold smoothness of the lines of the columns at the front and side veranda, offering no concessions.
“This doesn’t seem much like you,” Arthur says vaguely, his eyes tracing the faint line of shadow where the roof meets the darkening gray of the sky. The clouds look low, heavy. Eames thinks it will snow again, any minute now.
“The house belonged to my parents,” Eames shrugs and pretends not to notice the way Arthur glances at him, sharply, like that means something to him. Maybe he senses that it isn’t a very good answer; Eames’s parents don’t seem like the type of people who would live here either. Then again, Eames can’t really imagine the type of person who would. They go inside.
The front parlor is full of dark wood and intricate carving that Eames largely ignores, the same way he supposes security guards at the Louvre ignore the Mona Lisa. His eyes always seem to just slip over them, noting their continued presence, everything in order, and then move on.
“You were a child in this place?” Arthur says, nose wrinkling.
“For a guest, you’re very rude,” Eames tells him. Arthur gives him a look that’s almost familiarly frustrated. Arthur is still on edge, though, Eames notices. “I used to think it might be nice to burn the whole thing down,” he says. “Salt the ground. But it’s a bit of a bastard, this house. It’s so stubborn I doubt it would even have the courtesy to obey the laws of physics. I rather like it.”
Arthur gives him a look that says ‘you would’ and Eames smiles at him, quickly. Arthur backs into the room, looks up the wide staircase over the foyer, up to the hallway that goes the width of the house. The banisters are carved as well. All the doors are kept closed.
“It’s ridiculously dark in here,” he says, and it is. All narrow hallways and furtively high ceilings. It’s not a place that was designed to catch the light. Arthur is quiet for a long time, until he notices Eames looking at him. “I’m trying to imagine you growing up here,” he admits. “Like some kind of mushroom in the dark.”
“Generally, I object to being compared to fungus,” Eames says, “but I’m assuming you’ve come a long way and you’re delirious with exhaustion, so I won’t hold you accountable for it.”
“Yes,” Arthur says, “I have come a long way.” He looks at Eames again and Eames leans back, like he’s surveying the house and not like he’s backing away. He doesn’t think Arthur is fooled, though.
“I could set you up in one of the rooms upstairs,” Eames says. “If you want to rest.”
Arthur hesitates for too long, then says, “That’s probably a good idea.”
The stairs are wide enough that they can walk side by side, neither one leading. The second and third floors are much less ostentatious, for whatever reason. Probably, Eames thinks, whoever built the house decided that the mere existence of the upper levels was enough to speak for itself. Maybe they just got lazy. The hallways are so straight, plunging away from either side of the staircase into unlit endings. Rows and rows of closed doors.
Arthur moves towards the east wing but Eames says, “No, this way,” and leads him westward instead. Darling’s room is at the far east end, where the best light is. “This side has the better view,” Eames says. Arthur gives him another curious look.
From the window in Arthur’s room Eames can just barely make out the stone lions on either side of the path to the overgrown back garden, the small circle of flagstones beyond with the fountain in its center, filled with nothing but a thin layer of ice and snow, covered in a tangle of winter-dead vines. He points it out to Arthur, who says, “I feel like Heathcliff is going to show up down there.”
“Please restrain yourself from being too Gothic,” Eames says. “It’s just a house.”
Arthur gives him that look again: a strained, almost pitying look.
“But if you feel the urge to swoon,” Eames says, “have at it.”
Arthur actually laughs at that, says, “You have never once made me swoon, Mr. Eames.”
For half a second, Eames thinks he won’t say it, but in the end, he decides he wants to see what Arthur will do. “I remember it differently,” he says.
Arthur keeps looking out the window, totally still, but a pulse jumps in his throat.
“I think,” he says, “that I am tired, after all.”
The snow is falling again when Eames presses a kiss to Darling’s cool temple and climbs into bed.
*
Eames makes tea and coffee the next morning. He barely lets the tea steep, but he brews the coffee strong. When he hands the tea to Darling up in the bedroom, Darling looks at him with an expression Eames half-recognizes from someone else’s face. It’s not quite anything definable, but it’s trying so hard to remember its own shape that Eames can’t look at it for more than a heartbeat.
“Eames,” Darling says finally, as if he’s just remembered the word.
“I’ll be just downstairs, love,” Eames says and shuts the door.
He takes the coffee to Arthur’s room but Arthur is already out on the side veranda, in a three piece suit but no coat, the square toes of his Oxfords cutting cleanly into the snow.
“Arthur,” Eames says, and he doesn’t know why.
Arthur turns and looks at him. He doesn’t smile when he takes the coffee cup, but his expression is much warmer after the first sip and he says, “Can we go for a walk?”
“If you like,” Eames says, and watches the movement of Arthur’s throat when he drinks the coffee, dark and black, exactly as he’s always liked it.
*
Eames takes Arthur through the back garden, down to the treeline and beyond. There’s a steep drop where the land plunges into a creek bed. Eames can still hear water flowing somewhere, if he stops breathing and really listens. This is what he’s doing when Arthur says, “You know why I’m here.”
Eames laughs, almost. “Well, I certainly didn’t think you were paying a friendly visit, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“But,” Arthur says, “I mean. You know, don’t you?”
Eames doesn’t answer. There is a layer of thin ice over most of the creek. Eames can see the burnt and muted shades of orange and brown, the leaves suspended in the frost until spring. There’s some snow on top of that, less crisp than the snow under their feet, but still white. Whiter than white, really. Utterly blank.
“You look younger than I thought you would,” Arthur says.
“Is that a compliment or not?” Eames says, raising an eyebrow.
“You know what I mean,” Arthur says. “Don’t you?”
Eames says nothing.
“Do you know?” Arthur asks him. Then, “Eames, do you know where you are?”
“Durham,” Eames says.
“Limbo, Eames, don’t you remember?”
Eames looks at him then and smiles: of course, of course he knows that.
“Why haven’t you left,” Arthur says, not like he’s asking.
“I have some things I need to take care of,” Eames says.
“It’s not real,” Arthur says. “Whatever you think you’re doing, it’s not real.”
“Of course,” Eames says, “but that’s only true for certain values of ‘real.’”
“Don’t,” Arthur says, makes a face. “Don’t get philosophical about this. The longer you wait-”
“I know,” Eames says. “But I’m going to keep waiting, if that’s alright with you.”
“Waiting? For what?”
“For you,” Eames says. Eames has been waiting for Arthur down here, up above, everywhere. For so long now. He doesn’t think it should surprise Arthur. And yet, Arthur is surprised.
“Eames,” he says, “I’m here.”
Eames looks at him, long. Arthur looks away first, at the snow. Eames follows suit.
“You know how Eskimos have dozens of words for snow?” Eames says. Arthur doesn’t even try to fight the segue. “They spend so long in it, they see it so clearly, what it is, all its parts. But no matter how many words they have for it, they can’t control it. They just live in it, giving it new names and waiting for it to come down.”
Arthur is still silent, still looking at him. Quiet and sorry. “I never promised you anything, Eames,” he says, just as a fact. Eames doesn’t think it requires a response.
He thinks of all his words for Arthur, all the things he understands: how Arthur likes his coffee, how he doesn’t like the texture of avocado, how he rolls up his shirtsleeves, how he smells, how he tastes, how he kisses. Eames has words for how Arthur fucks and comes and shakes apart, but he has no words for Arthur first thing in the morning. Eames has words for all this and he still doesn’t know how long it takes Arthur to wake up after he opens his eyes, if he likes to sleep curled up next to someone or if he prefers his own space, if he dreams.
“I’m here,” Arthur repeats, as if Eames needs to be reminded.
Maybe he does need that, Eames thinks, looking at Arthur and the way the cold wind has pinked his cheeks, just a little, making him look young. Fresh, alive. Real.
“But you’ve been here before,” Eames sighs and Arthur blinks, doesn’t comment.
*
The next morning Darling opens his mouth, works his throat, and no sound comes out. He’s more transparent than pale now, in the light. Eames can see the veins working under his skin like thinly inked rivers on maps. Eames thinks he can see the color of bones; he thinks that if touched the parchment thin skin over Darling’s chest he could feel the malleable texture of his organs, the slow expand and contract in the tissue of his lungs.
While Eames waits for the water to boil he stares out at the shed behind the house, at the shovel leaning against its side, the handle half-buried by snow.
Arthur watches him and says nothing. Eames can feel the weight of his stare somewhere between his shoulder blades, an itch he can’t scratch.
*
On the fourth day Arthur touches Eames’s hand, the arch of his thumb.
Eames thinks of Darling first and then he thinks, why not? Eames has no way to be sure of who he’s dealing with, what this person is, if this heartbeat he feels against his palm is really Arthur’s, what’s important, what exists. Eames knows this is limbo, but that’s no reason why some of it can’t be real.
“Do you remember how it happened?” Arthur asks. “How you got here?”
“No,” Eames lies.
He remembers that Arthur took the job, remembers that Arthur talked him into coming on as a forger, even though Eames said never three levels, never again, and he remembers the way Arthur hesitated when Eames took the bullet, but mostly he remembers how Arthur only hesitated for a moment. After, was all he had said and Eames had spat blood and said no rush, darling.
“I said I would come back,” Arthur says. “I told you I would come for you, do you remember?” His fingers move to touch the callused surface of Eames’s palm. Through harder skin Arthur feels farther away. Eames shifts out of reach.
“I can’t,” he says. He thinks he says.
Arthur says, “Why not?” as if he heard.
And Eames says, “Darling,” makes Arthur frown.
*
Arthur comes up to the east wing on the sixth day.
Eames sees him in the doorway over the thin spike of Darling’s shoulder. He wants to show some surprise, to jolt or shudder, but if he moves it will upset Darling, nestled against his chest, or the tea, steaming against Darling’s diluted, contorted face.
“Downstairs,” Arthur says, his voice strange and choked, like the sight of Darling is something he can’t swallow, something lodged in his throat.
He waits in the front parlor, starts talking before Eames even reaches the landing.
“Who is that supposed to be?” he says. “What is it doing here? Eames, this is fucked up, why is it here? Why does it look like that?” None of these are questions Eames has to answer; Arthur knows.
“Come with me,” he says instead, and takes Arthur to the graveyard.
*
The rows are orderly and the headstones are uniform, identical. Eames doesn’t remember how many there are now. At least fifty, possibly a hundred. Arthur kneels and brushes off the snow on the first headstone, reads the inscription. The next. The next. The next. He stops after the fifth - they all say the same thing. He stands, stares at Eames with a pity so sharp it has now become frantic. Eames doesn’t look away.
“You can’t stay here,” Arthur says, again. “Stop doing this to yourself, Eames, please. This isn’t real. Come back with me.”
Eames shrugs.
“They were all projections, Eames, don’t you see?” Arthur spreads his hands out, holds the whole snowy graveyard in their span. Row after row of dead Darlings.
“They seemed real,” Eames says, “at the time.”
“I’m real,” Arthur says.
“You do seem to be,” Eames agrees. “But you see,” he says to the headstones, “they said the same thing.”
“Eames, please,” Arthur says, “please come home with me.”
Eames looks at him sharply. Home, he thinks and begins to doubt. He says, “What if we are home?”
“Shut up,” Arthur says, quickly, like he can’t breathe. “Eames, I swear to god, I’m leaving in two days and if you don’t come with me you can fucking die here, I won’t come back for you again.” He says it with all the confidence of someone who has left Eames before, and Eames knows that Arthur, the real Arthur, has.
“You won’t leave,” Eames says. “You say that every time but you never leave.”
Arthur puts a hand in his hair, pulls. He’s calmer when he says, “I’m real, Eames. I promise.”
“I believe you,” Eames says, indulgently.
“Goddamnit,” Arthur says, “why would you choose this, why do you want to believe this sick fucking cycle is reality?”
“Because in this reality,” Eames says, “you always stay.”
Arthur’s expression opens sharply, spills; it’s like Eames has stabbed him.
Their walk back to the house is quiet; neither of them mentions the freshly carved headstone leaning against the shed next to the shovel and then late that night, as the snow comes down, Darling dies.
*
On the seventh day, Eames digs a new grave. He can feel the cold wood of the shovel biting into his hands, roughening the hard skin further as Eames struggles with the frozen earth. He doesn’t know precisely when Arthur arrives, but he becomes aware of him when the grave is half-full again, Darling out of sight beneath loose, dark soil. Arthur stays back until Eames has finished.
“Eames,” says Arthur, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left before and I shouldn’t have tried to leave again. I’m sorry, I should have come for you sooner. Eames,” he says. He says, “Eames,” and touches the sides of Eames’s face, desperate. His mouth is so cold against Eames’s, it burns.
And Eames says, “it’s alright, Darling, I promise, neither of us are going anywhere. It’s alright,” he says again. And then it is.
*
Three days later, Arthur turns up. He isn’t wearing a coat and there is no snow clinging to his eyelashes, melting and running down his cheek. He looks perfect and untouched, unreal.
“Hello,” Eames says. “Hello, Arthur.”
Arthur doesn’t say anything. Eames frowns, is suddenly nervous.
“Did I know you were coming?” Eames prompts.
“I’m late,” Arthur says. It almost sounds like an apology. Familiar ground, Eames thinks, at last.
“Eames,” Darling says, his face pinked from the light steam of the tea. Every detail is perfect. Who’s to say he isn’t real?
“Are you real?” Eames asks Arthur. “Is this real?”
“Does it matter?” Arthur asks. Does it? Eames wonders, idly. Is this what comes next? “Come with me.”
“Don’t go,” says Darling. “You promised me,” he says.
“I did promise,” Eames says to Arthur.
“I’m still not promising anything,” Arthur says, almost gently.
“Quelle surprise,” Eames murmurs, almost to himself.
“Eames,” Arthur says and touches Eames’s shoulder, a hard twist in his mouth that Eames had forgotten and an openness to his eyes that Eames is sure he never noticed before. Arthur’s hand is so warm, so nearly hot. Eames’s initial instinct is to flinch away from it. He doesn’t.
Darling looks at him, waiting. And Arthur looks at him, waiting. Arthur’s hand is outstretched.
“Darling,” Eames sighs, looking out to the graveyard, and he touches the solid knob of bone, the point of Arthur’s thin wrist.
*
A/N: ALRIGHT, so I don’t like to do notes at the end and shit, especially when the end is kind of supposed to be a little “wait, what?” like this one is but I wanted to say something about how this universe works. In my head, forging is a bit like being an architect, but with people. So, in limbo, instead of building buildings, Eames builds Arthurs/Darlings. What happens to the Arthurs is that they become Darlings when Eames realizes he built them wrong. He builds to the extent of his knowledge of Arthur and then doesn’t know how to go any further, like he tried to go into a building he built and found out it was just a façade and he has no idea what the inside’s supposed to look like anyway. And then he wants to scrap them, but because he’s not really aware that he’s BUILDING them as opposed to projecting them, he doesn’t think he can do that. But because he WILLS it, even subconsciously, it happens, like with building. ANYWAY, THE END.
THIS IS ALSO A STORY WHERE EAMES PINES. This is a story where Eames pines like A FUCKING FOREST.
ALSO, I did a whole metric fuck-ton of googling British manors and shit for Eames to live in (SIGH, sometimes I just look at my life and DESPAIR) and then I realized the reason I didn’t like any of them was because, in my mind, Eames totally lives in Jennings Hall. The problem is that Jennings Hall is in Vermont and, in my mind, Eames does not live in Vermont, so one of these things had to move. So Jennings is now in Durham, deal with it. (FUN FACT TO KNOW AND SHARE: Jennings is the inspiration for The Haunting of Hill House and is, supposedly, actual facts haunted. I’ve hung out in that building and, I have to say, sometimes that place just does not want you in it. If a building could be sullen and bitchy and mopey, this one would be, and that is why I picked it.)
And let’s just get this out of the way now: there’s a fucking Eliot reference, for which I apologize PROFUSELY, goddamn. But, like, you know how in 10 Things I Hate About You Julia-Stiles’s-Friend is like “Shakespeare and I are involved” well, that is the way I am with The Waste Land. If I’m writing a story about “snow” and “forgetting,” then, man, shit’s just gonna happen, alright? But there is no excuse for the fact that this is also slightly influenced by Slavoj Žižek’s analysis of David Lynch’s films. You can watch the clip of The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema that I’m talking about here and I recommend it because it’s SO RIDICULOUS and I have a kind of weird crush on Žižek (and by 'crush' I mean I really really want to hear him say 'you're despicable'). I swear to god, every story I write in this fandom winds up with me looking like a fucking douche captain, I give the fuck up.
PS: this story has a mini-playlist that I was listening to when I was writing it, available right here
Title: Darling
Pairing: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4000
Summary: “It’s not real,” Arthur says. “Whatever you think you’re doing, it’s not real.”
“Of course,” Eames says, “but that’s only true for certain values of ‘real.’”
Warnings: Basically, this is a ghost story. But with no literal ghosts. But with a lot of dead bodies.
Notes: Thanks as always to your__design, especially for limiting me to JUST ONE Wuthering Heights joke. Still, I should mention this whole thing essentially reads like a Brontë parody. She tried, but she couldn’t stop me. It’s not her fault, it’s all me. Also, I know the Eskimo-words-for-snow thing is almost universally accepted to be an urban legend. It’s just… METAPHORICALLY, YOU KNOW? Whatever! Cut text and title from “And Darling” by Tegan and Sara. OBVIOUS.
EDIT: NOW WITH AWESOME ART!! thanks so much sashyasavvy! *loves it forever*
“It starts with: ‘dreams are for those who cannot endure reality; who are not strong enough for reality.’
It ends with: ‘reality is for those who are not strong enough to endure, to confront their dreams.’”
- Slavoj Žižek-
They have a routine.
He’s too weak now to leave the bed, so Eames brings him tea and toast in the mornings and at nights, tries to make him eat more than that and can’t.
“It’s the chamomile,” he says. “It’s your favorite, Darling.”
And Darling smiles, his face tired and pale, almost unrecognizable, almost inhuman. Papier-mâché, Eames thinks, like a mask. He half expects the skin to flake off when he touches it. At night Eames curls around him anyway, smoothes a callused hand over his shoulder, and every night he’s a little less warm.
“It’ll be better tomorrow,” Eames says, every night.
Every night, Darling says, “I trust you.”
*
It’s been a long winter.
When Darling is awake, Eames reads to him. He does all the voices. Mostly, though, Darling sleeps and Eames goes for walks.
It’s strange, he thinks, how the snow doesn’t seem all that cold. It smoothes the hills into uniform blind spots until Eames stumbles tracks across them. He can never find the footprints the next morning, but they’re always there to help him find his way back to the house in the afternoon, and that’s the only bit that’s important.
Sometimes it feels colder in the house than it does outside. It makes Eames think of a poem, he can’t quite remember how it goes. Something about memory and desire, and the Starnbergersee. ‘Winter kept us warm,’ he thinks and then, what comes next? Something… forgetful? Something about sledding, something about mountains. It would be appropriate, he thinks. If only he could remember how it goes. Sledding, he thinks. ‘Hold on tight. And down we went.’
He’s repeating the bits he can remember over to himself when he sees the body, lying curled up in the drifts, not like a cold animal, but like a sleeping child. It’s a man.
Eames kneels down and pokes. Eyes open under snow-dusted lashes, slowly, shaking off soft flakes. It seems familiar, half-remembered.
“Hello,” Eames says. He brushes snow off the man’s face. “Hello, Arthur.”
“Hi,” Arthur says.
“Did I know you were coming?” Eames asks, and doesn’t help Arthur get to his feet.
“I hope so,” Arthur says. He looks down his front, frowns, and brushes away the snow.
Eames watches him and doesn’t say anything.
Arthur looks up at Eames. He’s not wearing any gloves and his coat is more fashion than function. “Can I stay for awhile?” Arthur asks. His bare hands are paused above the lapels of his coat, in between motions.
Eames can see the bluish tinge to his fingernails, but it’s the delicacy of Arthur’s wrists that decides him; he had forgotten how birdlike, how hollow they seemed. They seem like an older man’s wrists.
Eames nods.
They don’t talk on the way back, except Arthur says, “By the way, you were completely mangling that poem.”
“I know,” Eames says, and smiles.
*
They approach the house through the ruined stone pillars, no gate in between just a passage that faces out into the open fields, the house waiting just around the bend, obscured by dark trees. On the other side, somewhere nestled below the hills, there is a graveyard, but it’s already too dark to see it from this far away. It is dark, very dark at night, and night comes early here. All these trees, Eames thinks, and the mountains. Sometimes it seems that the hills will close over the house. There is a town somewhere, Eames remembers, but he never sees it. Sometimes he forgets it’s there and there is only the house.
Eames doesn’t know a lot about architecture or the house itself; that’s not his job and he’s not the oldest son, he was never supposed to inherit. It was built around a time when nothing was left undecorated, when every house had a Gothic overindulgence that appeals to him - towers and buttresses and wooden lace, but still made of purposeful stones that slot firmly together and floorboards that even now don’t creak as much as they rightly should, smoothed into submission. Still, there is something about the house that strikes him as unkind. A psychiatrist would say it was his upbringing that he was thinking of but Eames knows himself well enough to know that he has no problems with that. If his parents were a little cold it was fine because their disinterest suited him, but he’d have to agree that the house reminds him of his parents, just a little: the high-chin of the balcony, the cold smoothness of the lines of the columns at the front and side veranda, offering no concessions.
“This doesn’t seem much like you,” Arthur says vaguely, his eyes tracing the faint line of shadow where the roof meets the darkening gray of the sky. The clouds look low, heavy. Eames thinks it will snow again, any minute now.
“The house belonged to my parents,” Eames shrugs and pretends not to notice the way Arthur glances at him, sharply, like that means something to him. Maybe he senses that it isn’t a very good answer; Eames’s parents don’t seem like the type of people who would live here either. Then again, Eames can’t really imagine the type of person who would. They go inside.
The front parlor is full of dark wood and intricate carving that Eames largely ignores, the same way he supposes security guards at the Louvre ignore the Mona Lisa. His eyes always seem to just slip over them, noting their continued presence, everything in order, and then move on.
“You were a child in this place?” Arthur says, nose wrinkling.
“For a guest, you’re very rude,” Eames tells him. Arthur gives him a look that’s almost familiarly frustrated. Arthur is still on edge, though, Eames notices. “I used to think it might be nice to burn the whole thing down,” he says. “Salt the ground. But it’s a bit of a bastard, this house. It’s so stubborn I doubt it would even have the courtesy to obey the laws of physics. I rather like it.”
Arthur gives him a look that says ‘you would’ and Eames smiles at him, quickly. Arthur backs into the room, looks up the wide staircase over the foyer, up to the hallway that goes the width of the house. The banisters are carved as well. All the doors are kept closed.
“It’s ridiculously dark in here,” he says, and it is. All narrow hallways and furtively high ceilings. It’s not a place that was designed to catch the light. Arthur is quiet for a long time, until he notices Eames looking at him. “I’m trying to imagine you growing up here,” he admits. “Like some kind of mushroom in the dark.”
“Generally, I object to being compared to fungus,” Eames says, “but I’m assuming you’ve come a long way and you’re delirious with exhaustion, so I won’t hold you accountable for it.”
“Yes,” Arthur says, “I have come a long way.” He looks at Eames again and Eames leans back, like he’s surveying the house and not like he’s backing away. He doesn’t think Arthur is fooled, though.
“I could set you up in one of the rooms upstairs,” Eames says. “If you want to rest.”
Arthur hesitates for too long, then says, “That’s probably a good idea.”
The stairs are wide enough that they can walk side by side, neither one leading. The second and third floors are much less ostentatious, for whatever reason. Probably, Eames thinks, whoever built the house decided that the mere existence of the upper levels was enough to speak for itself. Maybe they just got lazy. The hallways are so straight, plunging away from either side of the staircase into unlit endings. Rows and rows of closed doors.
Arthur moves towards the east wing but Eames says, “No, this way,” and leads him westward instead. Darling’s room is at the far east end, where the best light is. “This side has the better view,” Eames says. Arthur gives him another curious look.
From the window in Arthur’s room Eames can just barely make out the stone lions on either side of the path to the overgrown back garden, the small circle of flagstones beyond with the fountain in its center, filled with nothing but a thin layer of ice and snow, covered in a tangle of winter-dead vines. He points it out to Arthur, who says, “I feel like Heathcliff is going to show up down there.”
“Please restrain yourself from being too Gothic,” Eames says. “It’s just a house.”
Arthur gives him that look again: a strained, almost pitying look.
“But if you feel the urge to swoon,” Eames says, “have at it.”
Arthur actually laughs at that, says, “You have never once made me swoon, Mr. Eames.”
For half a second, Eames thinks he won’t say it, but in the end, he decides he wants to see what Arthur will do. “I remember it differently,” he says.
Arthur keeps looking out the window, totally still, but a pulse jumps in his throat.
“I think,” he says, “that I am tired, after all.”
The snow is falling again when Eames presses a kiss to Darling’s cool temple and climbs into bed.
*
Eames makes tea and coffee the next morning. He barely lets the tea steep, but he brews the coffee strong. When he hands the tea to Darling up in the bedroom, Darling looks at him with an expression Eames half-recognizes from someone else’s face. It’s not quite anything definable, but it’s trying so hard to remember its own shape that Eames can’t look at it for more than a heartbeat.
“Eames,” Darling says finally, as if he’s just remembered the word.
“I’ll be just downstairs, love,” Eames says and shuts the door.
He takes the coffee to Arthur’s room but Arthur is already out on the side veranda, in a three piece suit but no coat, the square toes of his Oxfords cutting cleanly into the snow.
“Arthur,” Eames says, and he doesn’t know why.
Arthur turns and looks at him. He doesn’t smile when he takes the coffee cup, but his expression is much warmer after the first sip and he says, “Can we go for a walk?”
“If you like,” Eames says, and watches the movement of Arthur’s throat when he drinks the coffee, dark and black, exactly as he’s always liked it.
*
Eames takes Arthur through the back garden, down to the treeline and beyond. There’s a steep drop where the land plunges into a creek bed. Eames can still hear water flowing somewhere, if he stops breathing and really listens. This is what he’s doing when Arthur says, “You know why I’m here.”
Eames laughs, almost. “Well, I certainly didn’t think you were paying a friendly visit, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“But,” Arthur says, “I mean. You know, don’t you?”
Eames doesn’t answer. There is a layer of thin ice over most of the creek. Eames can see the burnt and muted shades of orange and brown, the leaves suspended in the frost until spring. There’s some snow on top of that, less crisp than the snow under their feet, but still white. Whiter than white, really. Utterly blank.
“You look younger than I thought you would,” Arthur says.
“Is that a compliment or not?” Eames says, raising an eyebrow.
“You know what I mean,” Arthur says. “Don’t you?”
Eames says nothing.
“Do you know?” Arthur asks him. Then, “Eames, do you know where you are?”
“Durham,” Eames says.
“Limbo, Eames, don’t you remember?”
Eames looks at him then and smiles: of course, of course he knows that.
“Why haven’t you left,” Arthur says, not like he’s asking.
“I have some things I need to take care of,” Eames says.
“It’s not real,” Arthur says. “Whatever you think you’re doing, it’s not real.”
“Of course,” Eames says, “but that’s only true for certain values of ‘real.’”
“Don’t,” Arthur says, makes a face. “Don’t get philosophical about this. The longer you wait-”
“I know,” Eames says. “But I’m going to keep waiting, if that’s alright with you.”
“Waiting? For what?”
“For you,” Eames says. Eames has been waiting for Arthur down here, up above, everywhere. For so long now. He doesn’t think it should surprise Arthur. And yet, Arthur is surprised.
“Eames,” he says, “I’m here.”
Eames looks at him, long. Arthur looks away first, at the snow. Eames follows suit.
“You know how Eskimos have dozens of words for snow?” Eames says. Arthur doesn’t even try to fight the segue. “They spend so long in it, they see it so clearly, what it is, all its parts. But no matter how many words they have for it, they can’t control it. They just live in it, giving it new names and waiting for it to come down.”
Arthur is still silent, still looking at him. Quiet and sorry. “I never promised you anything, Eames,” he says, just as a fact. Eames doesn’t think it requires a response.
He thinks of all his words for Arthur, all the things he understands: how Arthur likes his coffee, how he doesn’t like the texture of avocado, how he rolls up his shirtsleeves, how he smells, how he tastes, how he kisses. Eames has words for how Arthur fucks and comes and shakes apart, but he has no words for Arthur first thing in the morning. Eames has words for all this and he still doesn’t know how long it takes Arthur to wake up after he opens his eyes, if he likes to sleep curled up next to someone or if he prefers his own space, if he dreams.
“I’m here,” Arthur repeats, as if Eames needs to be reminded.
Maybe he does need that, Eames thinks, looking at Arthur and the way the cold wind has pinked his cheeks, just a little, making him look young. Fresh, alive. Real.
“But you’ve been here before,” Eames sighs and Arthur blinks, doesn’t comment.
*
The next morning Darling opens his mouth, works his throat, and no sound comes out. He’s more transparent than pale now, in the light. Eames can see the veins working under his skin like thinly inked rivers on maps. Eames thinks he can see the color of bones; he thinks that if touched the parchment thin skin over Darling’s chest he could feel the malleable texture of his organs, the slow expand and contract in the tissue of his lungs.
While Eames waits for the water to boil he stares out at the shed behind the house, at the shovel leaning against its side, the handle half-buried by snow.
Arthur watches him and says nothing. Eames can feel the weight of his stare somewhere between his shoulder blades, an itch he can’t scratch.
*
On the fourth day Arthur touches Eames’s hand, the arch of his thumb.
Eames thinks of Darling first and then he thinks, why not? Eames has no way to be sure of who he’s dealing with, what this person is, if this heartbeat he feels against his palm is really Arthur’s, what’s important, what exists. Eames knows this is limbo, but that’s no reason why some of it can’t be real.
“Do you remember how it happened?” Arthur asks. “How you got here?”
“No,” Eames lies.
He remembers that Arthur took the job, remembers that Arthur talked him into coming on as a forger, even though Eames said never three levels, never again, and he remembers the way Arthur hesitated when Eames took the bullet, but mostly he remembers how Arthur only hesitated for a moment. After, was all he had said and Eames had spat blood and said no rush, darling.
“I said I would come back,” Arthur says. “I told you I would come for you, do you remember?” His fingers move to touch the callused surface of Eames’s palm. Through harder skin Arthur feels farther away. Eames shifts out of reach.
“I can’t,” he says. He thinks he says.
Arthur says, “Why not?” as if he heard.
And Eames says, “Darling,” makes Arthur frown.
*
Arthur comes up to the east wing on the sixth day.
Eames sees him in the doorway over the thin spike of Darling’s shoulder. He wants to show some surprise, to jolt or shudder, but if he moves it will upset Darling, nestled against his chest, or the tea, steaming against Darling’s diluted, contorted face.
“Downstairs,” Arthur says, his voice strange and choked, like the sight of Darling is something he can’t swallow, something lodged in his throat.
He waits in the front parlor, starts talking before Eames even reaches the landing.
“Who is that supposed to be?” he says. “What is it doing here? Eames, this is fucked up, why is it here? Why does it look like that?” None of these are questions Eames has to answer; Arthur knows.
“Come with me,” he says instead, and takes Arthur to the graveyard.
*
The rows are orderly and the headstones are uniform, identical. Eames doesn’t remember how many there are now. At least fifty, possibly a hundred. Arthur kneels and brushes off the snow on the first headstone, reads the inscription. The next. The next. The next. He stops after the fifth - they all say the same thing. He stands, stares at Eames with a pity so sharp it has now become frantic. Eames doesn’t look away.
“You can’t stay here,” Arthur says, again. “Stop doing this to yourself, Eames, please. This isn’t real. Come back with me.”
Eames shrugs.
“They were all projections, Eames, don’t you see?” Arthur spreads his hands out, holds the whole snowy graveyard in their span. Row after row of dead Darlings.
“They seemed real,” Eames says, “at the time.”
“I’m real,” Arthur says.
“You do seem to be,” Eames agrees. “But you see,” he says to the headstones, “they said the same thing.”
“Eames, please,” Arthur says, “please come home with me.”
Eames looks at him sharply. Home, he thinks and begins to doubt. He says, “What if we are home?”
“Shut up,” Arthur says, quickly, like he can’t breathe. “Eames, I swear to god, I’m leaving in two days and if you don’t come with me you can fucking die here, I won’t come back for you again.” He says it with all the confidence of someone who has left Eames before, and Eames knows that Arthur, the real Arthur, has.
“You won’t leave,” Eames says. “You say that every time but you never leave.”
Arthur puts a hand in his hair, pulls. He’s calmer when he says, “I’m real, Eames. I promise.”
“I believe you,” Eames says, indulgently.
“Goddamnit,” Arthur says, “why would you choose this, why do you want to believe this sick fucking cycle is reality?”
“Because in this reality,” Eames says, “you always stay.”
Arthur’s expression opens sharply, spills; it’s like Eames has stabbed him.
Their walk back to the house is quiet; neither of them mentions the freshly carved headstone leaning against the shed next to the shovel and then late that night, as the snow comes down, Darling dies.
*
On the seventh day, Eames digs a new grave. He can feel the cold wood of the shovel biting into his hands, roughening the hard skin further as Eames struggles with the frozen earth. He doesn’t know precisely when Arthur arrives, but he becomes aware of him when the grave is half-full again, Darling out of sight beneath loose, dark soil. Arthur stays back until Eames has finished.
“Eames,” says Arthur, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left before and I shouldn’t have tried to leave again. I’m sorry, I should have come for you sooner. Eames,” he says. He says, “Eames,” and touches the sides of Eames’s face, desperate. His mouth is so cold against Eames’s, it burns.
And Eames says, “it’s alright, Darling, I promise, neither of us are going anywhere. It’s alright,” he says again. And then it is.
*
Three days later, Arthur turns up. He isn’t wearing a coat and there is no snow clinging to his eyelashes, melting and running down his cheek. He looks perfect and untouched, unreal.
“Hello,” Eames says. “Hello, Arthur.”
Arthur doesn’t say anything. Eames frowns, is suddenly nervous.
“Did I know you were coming?” Eames prompts.
“I’m late,” Arthur says. It almost sounds like an apology. Familiar ground, Eames thinks, at last.
“Eames,” Darling says, his face pinked from the light steam of the tea. Every detail is perfect. Who’s to say he isn’t real?
“Are you real?” Eames asks Arthur. “Is this real?”
“Does it matter?” Arthur asks. Does it? Eames wonders, idly. Is this what comes next? “Come with me.”
“Don’t go,” says Darling. “You promised me,” he says.
“I did promise,” Eames says to Arthur.
“I’m still not promising anything,” Arthur says, almost gently.
“Quelle surprise,” Eames murmurs, almost to himself.
“Eames,” Arthur says and touches Eames’s shoulder, a hard twist in his mouth that Eames had forgotten and an openness to his eyes that Eames is sure he never noticed before. Arthur’s hand is so warm, so nearly hot. Eames’s initial instinct is to flinch away from it. He doesn’t.
Darling looks at him, waiting. And Arthur looks at him, waiting. Arthur’s hand is outstretched.
“Darling,” Eames sighs, looking out to the graveyard, and he touches the solid knob of bone, the point of Arthur’s thin wrist.
*
A/N: ALRIGHT, so I don’t like to do notes at the end and shit, especially when the end is kind of supposed to be a little “wait, what?” like this one is but I wanted to say something about how this universe works. In my head, forging is a bit like being an architect, but with people. So, in limbo, instead of building buildings, Eames builds Arthurs/Darlings. What happens to the Arthurs is that they become Darlings when Eames realizes he built them wrong. He builds to the extent of his knowledge of Arthur and then doesn’t know how to go any further, like he tried to go into a building he built and found out it was just a façade and he has no idea what the inside’s supposed to look like anyway. And then he wants to scrap them, but because he’s not really aware that he’s BUILDING them as opposed to projecting them, he doesn’t think he can do that. But because he WILLS it, even subconsciously, it happens, like with building. ANYWAY, THE END.