maybe tomorrow
Rating: PG-13
Words: 582
Summary: Arthur hasn't had time to explain to Eames that some days he just won't be there.
Warning: Depression, maybe?
Disclaimer: No idea where this came from.
A wet, cold winter night; a cozy turquoise-walled coffee shop, with San Andreas fault lines in the red vinyl seats; two young men, one numb, one fraught, and a forgotten game of scrabble between them. To the left, Arthur, with hair dark as rain-slick city streets, black mission figs for eyes, long and gentle lips. To the right, Eames, whose entire face currently recalls rainy Sundays with a mouth like a bleeding pit of pomegranate seeds. He's got all-purpose hands-elegant enough for pianos, rough enough for carpentry; humanized stages set for smoking cigarettes and breaking necks and penning love letters and jerking cock. Arthur edges his thumbnail along the jagged contour of a peninsula of Formica, exposed in fictional-country shapes through the vintage yellow paint.
"How can I cheer you up?" Eames asks.
Arthur shrugs, shoulder rising and falling back into place with the disconcerting slapdash carriage of a scarecrow. "Some days you can't." His pale fingers drift to stir cooling peppermint tea inside a ceramic mug, spoon clinking metallic chirrups against its side.
"I want to make you happy," Eames persists, as he has all day.
"You do," Arthur says, voice aloft in a poor mimicry of whimsy. He half-smiles, inciting a dimple in his left cheek. "You always do. Under everything else, I'm always happy you're with me," he pauses to sip the cold tea; pulling it back behind his teeth is a chore. "It's not about you; what you can or can't do for me. It's all me, all my own issues. Some days I just won't be happy." His chin falls to his palm, he touches the skin beneath his eyes and feels as though he's prodding at skin that's been scraped raw by the claws of nightmares. "I know it's aggravating," he says tonelessly, "consuming. Depressing. You don't have to stay."
"What do you mean, stay?" Eames asks, pushing an 'L' tile across the uneven terrain of the table to Arthur.
"Stay as in, here with me now in this coffee shop, or...stay with me at all."
"Are you asking me to leave?"
"No," Arthur says, quick response time the only indicator of any emotion. Arthur dredges up the energy to wish he could inject some feeling into himself, into his words. All he feels is tired, though somewhere far beneath that, hissing smoke under the charcoal of his heart, is the fear of Eames leaving him. "I just...am giving you a choice. An out." He flicks the tile back to Eames.
"Let's go for a walk," Eames suggest abruptly. It sounds like a terrible idea to Arthur, but he hasn't got it in him to argue. Eames tosses dollar bills and quarters, covered in the grime of their lifespans, onto the table and hauls Arthur up.
In an alley a block away, Eames shoves Arthur against slippery brick, rattling the breath in Arthur's throat and the bones in his skin, but nothing more. Eames frames Arthur with his arms and kisses him, feverish, desperate to yank a moan, a curse, a prayer from Arthur. "Feel something," Eames begs against Arthur's skin-against his mouth, his jaw, the corner of his throat where his pulse is tucked away. "Feel something, feel something," whispered into shadows.
"I can't, I can't," Arthur murmurs, breath materializing briefly in the chill. His eyes find the street lamp above them. "Not today, maybe tomorrow."