Volta [2/2]
[previous part]
05.
He knows it's just a dumb animal response, not much more than the drooling of a dog taught to listen for a bell, but Arthur puts his hand on the door in front of him and all his blood runs hot. The vertigo of his racing heart. It's a little thing that he can't help, what his skin remembers-- what his bones will cling to ten months after he's turned and left.
Sand rustles under his feet, like ball bearings nudging him forward. He knows this bar. Years ago when he walked into it, the jukebox was a flashing, living thing, whirring in the corner, dancing for a dollar. He remembers eyeing it as he climbed up onto a stool, elbows on the plexiglass expanse of the counter. The lights behind the bartender were neon blue and green. What the hell kind of place is this, he thought, and ordered a martini because he had no idea what else to do.
A second, when he drained the bottom of the first. His phone stayed blank. It wasn't a team he knew entirely well; the extractor was a well-respected veteran he'd never worked with before, and despite the clear aridity of his Pacific Northwest accent over the phone, Arthur half pictured him a Sean Connery with a beard like bristle. The chemist, he'd run something with a couple months back, but he wasn't sure he could pick her out in a crowd. The architect was a new recruit he'd never even heard of, and then there was Eames-- tardy like the rest of them, wherever he was.
"Eames?" someone said from further down the bar, like they were plucking the name from his reverie. "No, not yet, but I intend to steer clear of him as best as I can. I've done some asking around. With what I've heard of him so far, I'll count myself lucky if we can just wrap this job up without him fucking us over."
Arthur eyed him over the rim of his glass. Mid-twenties, weak jowls, one foot jittering against the leg of his chair. And you must be our architect. Glib and desperate to impress the extractor, who sat hunched over in a parka with his back to Arthur. Some juvie graduate who flunked out of a design school somewhere, arrogant enough to assume the criminal lifestyle would suit him. Someone's going to have to wipe up the mess that idiot makes, thought Arthur. Guess I'm playing babysitter on this one. He tapped his empty glass for the bartender.
"Just a lot of really foul stuff," -- god, he was still at it -- "and not just about him being a dick or whatever, because hey, I get it, we're not the good guys here. We gotta be dicks. I'm a dick, I'm proud of it. But this Eames is some kind of weaselly son of a bitch, you know? Greasy spineless fuck. Isn't he English or something? Keep the hell away from him, take my word of advice. And never hire him again, what are you, nuts?"
Some clown had put Friends in Low Places on the jukebox, like the irony of it would render the bar habitable. Arthur wrapped a hand around his gibson and meditated on the lyrics; where the whiskey drowns, and the beer chases my blues away. That's right.
"Like this forging bullshit, know what I mean?" -- and it was none of Arthur's business, nothing to do with him at all -- "You get me a PASIV and I swear to god, that fucker's out of a job. Any dumb bastard could do that shit. And what, he just swans in with his play-acting and swans right back out and leaves it to the rest of us to get our hands dirty? And then laps up the paycheck anyway? The hell do we even need him for, man? He's not here, you're his boss, just fucking send the goddamn double-dealing bastard back to his fag-cave where he--"
It was Garth Brooks that made me do it, your honor. Just wasn't in the mood for his twang. Arthur didn't really intend to, but nevertheless, he found himself standing above the new architect with a stream of gin and vermouth drizzling over him from his upended martini glass. The cocktail onion hit and slid off the straggly crown of his head.
"Good morning, you asshole," said Arthur.
"What the fuck," spluttered their architect, stumbling to his feet, bar stool crashing to the floor.
"Yes, well," said Arthur, "save the rest of it and say it to his fucking face," and clocked him as hard as he could.
It caught him just under the cheekbone, a little lower than he'd aimed. I gave it my best, that's what counts, thought Arthur, as their architect fell in a heap of stainless steel chairs and the bartender came rushing over from behind the plexiglass counter. The dull throb in his knuckles felt like a medal of honor, the adrenaline like a cool flood of mint and winter air. I didn't mean to cause a big scene, just give me an hour and then--
"Arthur," said the man in the parka, "Jesus Christ."
He turned to find Eames staring at him, eyes wide.
+
This is what happened:
There in the middle of the havoc, the racket of the mob, Eames reached out a hand and took him by the elbow, quiet and slow. He put his thumb to the skin beneath the rolled-up edge of Arthur's sleeve, so goddamn careful that Arthur thought his knees would give out from the rush of heat inside him. Oh, god, how it burned. Eames could probably feel it, that thrum of blood under his finger, calling his name, inviting him in. Arthur grabbed blindly at Eames's shoulder, unsure if it was eiderdown or muscle he was clutching at, dizzy with the solemn brush of Eames's thumb where the bruises had washed away. Soft as a caress over a string drawn taut.
Eames, he began, and had to bite his lip just to keep from screaming.
How strange it is, like the trembling of the earth under your feet, to know the sudden weight of your own want. The crushing inertia of the years left voiceless. Whatever Eames saw in his face when he looked up, whatever it was that made Eames curl his hand around the back of his head and kiss him, it couldn't have been anything less than an avalanche. The colors of the bar swam like northern lights.
Arthur opened up into the kiss because he was shaking apart, unsteady as a man pulled from the edge of death. The taste of vodka and coffee, bittersweet and warm, barely tethering his feet to the ground. And the old apostasy wasn't enough to hold him back from prayer when he closed his eyes and thought, Mother Mary, I don't know how to let him go.
+
+
"I told-- I told you it would fade," said Arthur, stuttering over the hitch in his voice. "Once I was off the Trihypnyl, it was only a matter of time before--"
"God, look at you. What a live wire," said Eames. "What'd you sock him for, anyway?"
"I don't know," said Arthur. "What were you letting him step all over you for?"
Eames didn't answer, only ghosted his teeth over the shell of Arthur's ear. He laughed when his hand caught in Arthur's belt buckle, and Arthur felt the sound wash hot across the nape of his neck, unraveling him stitch by stitch, every seam he'd painstakingly drawn closed and simmered under. That's all right, though, isn't it. I came this far to let you undo me. He lay back and sank into the hotel sheets, thirsty.
"You fucking hooligan," said Eames, unbearably gentle. "I want to fuck the metal straight out of you."
Or maybe he said mettle, but Arthur was hardly listening. Yes, he thought, yes, please. Under his clothes, Eames was an edifice, terra incognita where the dragons lay coiled. Lands that cartographers dreamed of knowing. Mesmerized, Arthur mapped him with his fingers and his tongue, swam up his rivers of ink. Seven miles across, a granite wall.
By the time Eames had him pinned to the bed, they were flushed and out of breath, the sheets a tangled heap around their ankles. Under the hazy glow of the bedside lamp, Eames was made of gold. Shadows pooled around the tense knot of his smile.
"You have no idea," he said, "how long I've wanted--"
And that was true, of course; neither of them knew the private histories they'd harbored away, the ever-sinces and the when-we-firsts. But there were better things for them to do right then than one-up each other, and the thick, damp line of Eames's cock seemed a better prospect than idle conversation. Save your confessions for Sunday, why don't you. More peevishly than he meant to, Arthur bucked up against Eames's hands on his shoulders, straining under the hold.
Eames went deathly still, his grip tightening. For a long suspended moment Arthur thought something had gone wrong, that he'd fucked it up somehow-- and then Eames tilted his head, his eyes wild in the lamplight. Darker and stranger than he remembered.
"What," asked Arthur, too loud in the sudden silence.
"I figured that's how it would go," said Eames, and leaned down and kissed him again.
Shit, thought Arthur, what's going on, because the touch unnerved him. It was a measured, dangerous thing, almost angry in its restraint. What was Eames asking for, anyway? As though he'd caged a wildcat, waiting for it to lunge at him, anxious that it wouldn't jump for his throat. Afraid that something or someone had managed to tame it--
Then, with a start, he knew it; Jesus, he wants me to fight him. The narrative Eames had fashioned for them was written in the contrarian set of Arthur's jaw, an homage to every recalcitrant bone in his body. That's the way he figured it would go. That's how he figured Arthur was.
I'm not who you think I am, Arthur would have told him, but when he bit at Eames's lips as a prelude to his full irritation, Eames made a strangled sound and shot out his hand, fumbling with the condom on the coffee table. The ashtray toppled to the carpet, a dull report. Like checking for blood, Eames licked his mouth and swiped at it with the back of his hand.
Maybe they were both out of their minds, but in that moment, Arthur was less annoyed than thrilled. What Eames was looking for wasn't triumph or conquest, but the exhilaration of a leased happiness. For a bird of prey to take a shine to him, to fold its unpinioned wings and let him smooth down its feathers for a minute or two. And the thought of Eames wanting him bad enough to hold him down-- that, Arthur liked.
It was the wrong foot to get off on, wasn't it. Predicating their time together on a promise of flight. You make me want to stay just to prove you wrong, thought Arthur, through the slow welcome ache of Eames pushing inside him. You make me want to run just to prove you right.
Later, Eames put his ear to the tremor of Arthur's chest, like listening for distant horses. Languid in his exhaustion, Arthur allowed the weight to linger, only shivering a little as Eames traced absent patterns over his skin.
"It's pounding so fast," said Eames, low, like he was in awe. "I did that, didn't I? It was me?"
+
It was a wonder you could hear it at all over the clamor of your own doubt, thinks Arthur, toeing at the sand across the floorboards. Maybe if you'd really listened, if you'd taken a little time to mull over the frantic Morse tap of my heart, you would have known the answer I gave you years ago. What you had lying in the palm of your hand all along.
It was me, you said, as though the most you could ever do to me was make me come hard enough to need to catch my breath. Of course it was you, Eames. You fucking asshole. Isn't that what made you run, in the end? Because I let you down by asking for you?
The recess of the bar crooks into a corridor behind the jukebox, a passage through the wall that Arthur doesn't remember. The creak of wood under his feet, that he can blame on the aging floor, but he can't explain away the breeze at the back of his neck. Warm and light, not the unforgiving blast of a limbo sandstorm. Familiar, but nothing he can place. An artifact.
+
06.
A different bar in a different city, a different time. This one is a bit more straightforward. Carpeted floors, leather seats on the bar stools, and the music was just loud enough to drown out the bark of Eames's laugh. Arthur only guessed it from the twist of his mouth, the incredulity in his face.
"Fancy seeing you here," said Eames.
"You've had enough," said Arthur, and yanked his drink away from him. Eames reached for it. Not in the mood for keep-away, Arthur took a long pull from it instead-- a nutty dark beer he might have enjoyed at any other time. The sort of thing he might have liked tasting on Eames's tongue, if things had been simpler between them. Eames watched him a moment, then relented, swiveling back toward the counter.
"So call me a cab," he said, eyes fixed on the liquor shelf. "Small town, isn't it? Small sort of world, I didn't think you'd end up tripping over me here, of all places. Sorry I got in your way, must have ruined your evening. Should I leave?"
"How've you been," asked Arthur.
"Please, spare me the pity," said Eames. "If you gave the slightest fuck at all, we'd be having a different conversation right now. Either this is really some unfortunate coincidence or you're just here to gloat, and whichever way, I think you can do me the courtesy of letting me alone now, thank you."
Arthur sits at the empty bar, legs dangling, the bottles on the shelf full of sand. He wouldn't look at me, he remembers. That was how he knew Eames was lying without meaning to, skirting the truth like ice he was afraid to tread on. And that was how he knew Eames would break the silence first, too restless to let the indifferent noise do the talking for them.
"But I don't understand," said Eames, at last, "what could have possibly scared you into running."
"Any number of things," said Arthur.
"You're the fucking bogeyman," said Eames. "You're the stuff of nightmares, Arthur. You don't scare. Least of all by anything I have to offer."
"You have a lot of notions," said Arthur. "Maybe a lot of them are wrong."
"Yeah?" asked Eames. "You think I'm wrong?"
Of course he was. It wasn't coincidence that brought Arthur there, and he hadn't come to gloat. A check-up, Eames. Half to see how you've been doing, and half to see how I've been doing. If you would still frighten me as much as ever. Because that was what Arthur ran from; the prospect of Eames, of coming to know him too well.
Not the dread of ennui, or the festering of stagnant water. Not boredom. But a sinking of the heart you feel when you hold an animal in your arms, and your fingers brush over that velvet inch of throat you'd slit to let out its blood. It's a terrifying thing to see someone in his entirety. To know him too well, to get too used to him, to learn where to touch him, where to stab him, how to love him.
"And here you come, pleased as you please, slipping back onstage like nothing ever happened," said Eames. "Well, then, welcome back. What do you want? I'm still here for you to mangle, I suppose. Ready when you are. In the immortal fucking words of Khalil fucking Gibran, if your heart is a fucking volcano--"
To know when he was drunk, long before the messy slur of his tirades. Arthur motioned for a glass of water, nudged it toward Eames with the back of his hand, waiting it out. It wasn't the last time he would run, and Eames would eventually be the last one to bolt-- but the gash was raw, then, and neither of them any good with forecasts. It was worth a rant or two, severe weather ahead or not. Arthur still understands.
"But I do wonder, Arthur, have you ever thought of this the other way round?" asked Eames. "How things would go then?"
"How things would go when?" asked Arthur.
"If I was the one who up and disappeared," said Eames. "If I was the one who strolled in here, snatching your drink from you, and you hadn't the slightest idea why I'd been gone, or where I'd been, or why the bloody hell I was back. Would we be this civil, I wonder? Could you manage to restrain yourself from shooting me in the fucking face?"
There were a great many things that needed to be said to that, starting with Eames, I am not actually in the habit of pulling my gun on every little annoyance, but it didn't seem the moment for quibbles. And Eames wasn't really being civil at all, was he? Or maybe Arthur had just learned too well how to read the barometer of his unhappiness, every familiarity a handful of clay, building a full person out of him. God, he couldn't bear it.
It wouldn't be the same thing at all, Arthur meant to say, if you were the one to run. It wouldn't be the same because I know, beyond a shred of doubt, why I've come to find you here. With you, it would only be guessing games. That's why it would be different. At least, like this, I know that I--
Listen, Eames. I still--
But there it was again, the truth too obvious to offer up naked on its silver platter. Too visceral for the open air, and Arthur steadied himself with a mouthful of beer, letting it quench him to some semblance of composure. It wasn't the moment for unwanted truths, either. There would be better chances. They had time. And the thought of confession was like watching the fall of a stone cast into an abyss, because wouldn't that turn him human, someone with the capacity for regret? Someone too mortal for Eames to love? What a pair they'd make then, two bodies of meat and bone, lost in the wilderness, dumbly waiting for time and their own piece of shit karma to catch up with them. With nothing to look forward to but decay.
Arthur swallowed, still a little dry, and inched his hand on top of Eames's. His fingers flinched under the touch, and Arthur thought, I know. I'm just as scared as you are. But the warm, rough ridge of his knuckles and the way he didn't move away, surely that was a testament to want in the midst of terror. It had to mean something.
Instead of everything else he could have said, Arthur bent his head to Eames's ear and murmured, low enough to hear over the music, sorry. Eames wavered, like the mirage of an oasis, and turned toward him.
+
They left the city by train. Bruises dotting them black and blue beneath their clothes, the angry trace of teeth. The sky rushing past them, too, was mottled purple, yellows and greens, the remnants of a bad memory.
"Storm coming," said Arthur.
"No," said Eames. "It always looks like that around here."
Around where? Where was here, where were they-- what were they doing? All Arthur remembers is the throb of his tailbone. The severe upholstery on their seats. The faint spice of Eames's cologne, a sheen of sweat and musk. He leaned his head on Eames's shoulder, just to test the waters, and Eames only tensed a moment before he shifted and carved out a little nook for him. So they were all right, if only because Arthur wouldn't take anything else for an answer.
Sleep on the go had never been his forte, though with his eyes closed and in the lull of the train, it was close enough an approximation of repose. He really was sorry, honest to god. It was the truth, if not the full truth. He never meant for any of it to happen, but he'd thought of it too much, when he knew he shouldn't have. All the blood he'd drawn from Eames between their sheets, all the blood he'd offered up in exchange, he meant as an apology.
"Arthur," said Eames, under his breath.
He didn't answer. You're cinnamon and nutmeg and salt on my tongue, Eames. Black pepper and leather and smoke, the crunch of snow through a Scandinavian forest. The rasp of your stubble on the insides of my thighs.
Eames didn't say anything, either. Just ran a finger across Arthur's wrist, the kind of touch so gentle it could set you on fire, like he didn't know what would happen if he held on too tight. Five feet nine inches of spun sugar, bullshit. Arthur could have wept at the injustice of it, only he'd forgotten how to breathe.
How dare he treat me like I was too good for him. Arthur didn't know where to begin, drowning in him, nothing for his fists to pound against. So he did the only thing he could-- kept quiet and waited for the train to jolt him awake, listening to the soft click of Eames's totem against his fingernails. Will you stop checking it, I'm still here, he didn't say. I came for you. I never could stay away.
A flash of gold glints off the sand in the liquor bottles, the late light slanting through the glass. That's not what Cobb said, is it, not the days without edges blurring into one another, fifty years as seamless as any sluggish afternoon. If it isn't a sunset to mark time, then it's a sunset to make a point. I must be nearing the end of something, thinks Arthur, and puts his hand on a westward window, the silhouette of his flesh translucent against the glow. You and your metaphors.
A horn honks outside, bleary, cutting through the haze. Arthur creaks the window open and sees a car idling at the door.
"Taxi?" shouts the driver. "You called for a taxi, no?"
With a shrill, bright sound behind him, a bottle bursts apart on the shelf. It's not quite gunfire, but Arthur ducks by instinct anyway. Sand streams down the racks. The bottle next to it shatters in turn, a domino explosion of silver dust, and the edge of the counter begins to dissolve into grains. A third bottle, then a fourth. A bar stool collapses and scatters on the floor.
"Yeah," says Arthur. "Yeah, I think so-- hang on."
He darts outside, the desert wind at his back. There's no need for him to linger on the wasteland left behind, and he only bothers to look after he tumbles into the backseat of the cab, shutting out the howl of the ravage. The sand beats against the frame of the car, a pitter-patter cool as rain. Only the dim echo of white noise corralled where it can't hurt him.
+
07.
"I suppose I ought to know you," says Arthur, shaking out the collar of his shirt.
"Not necessarily," says the driver. "These are his memories, not yours." He's a pair of eyes in the rearview mirror, a shoulder in a khaki jacket past the bulletproof partition.
"But I'm implicated in them," says Arthur. "I've come this far, I saw what he's been making of limbo. Still lying to my fucking face. Jesus Christ, like he ever wanted me to want him, when he just fucking turned tail and fled the instant he realized that he-- haven't I been in your cab before?"
"No," says the driver, "you haven't."
"So--" says Arthur.
"So the question is," says the driver, "why not?"
The view is dreary, cities looming and fading away in the distance like through a fog. Arthur tilts his forehead against the window, and his breath steams up a damp patch of condensation, a sudden tinge of chill to the air that threads inside. Winter, he thinks, when I wasn't with him.
"He had a suitcase," says the driver. "I thought he was off to the airport, so I helped him load it up into the trunk. He pulled the door shut and didn't tell me where he was going. When I asked, he just told me to drive wherever, and I would have thrown him out if he hadn't taken out his wallet then. Stranger people come and go, I guess. He didn't seem like trouble so I let him be. Do you remember? One of those grey wool coats, we were heading into December. Do you remember what it looks like from the back?"
+
Just once, seared into him. Had he grown complacent? But the view of the coat he knows best is from the front, half of Eames's face tucked away beneath a scarf, his cheeks ruddy with the wind. He didn't think he'd ever need to watch Eames walk away-- although if it was any consolation, Eames seemed every bit as startled to find himself doing it.
Rewind the tape a little further. Adrenaline, endorphin, it was the thrill that had shoved them into each other again, a train collision. At LAX with Cobb stumbling past the baggage carousel in his sailor's trance, Eames knew to wait for Arthur before they'd said a word to each other.
"Seems like we're on again," said Arthur, congenial, as Eames fell into step beside him.
"Can't think of a better way to celebrate," said Eames, "can you?"
He looked at Arthur and the stars danced in his eyes, lotus flowers spurting to life on the vinyl floor beneath his heels. Somewhere, an oboe blew a long note and a celestial orchestra began to tune. That'll happen when you've just defied a decade's worth of industry wisdom. It gets to you, just a little. Arthur grabbed him by the front of his shirt and kissed him.
They lived like kings in the daze of triumph, punch-drunk with their own immortality. Hopping from city to city just because they could, conquering continents, drinking oceans. But in the end it fared no better than their old song and dance. That'll happen when you catapult yourself into a tangle of knots you've never learned how to undo. A soft place to land, but when it's time to come up for air, you have to cut your way out.
By the time they were ready to ruin things for good, they'd found themselves a second-floor apartment somewhere, a bedroom and kitchen that Arthur had been maudlin enough for a few months to start calling home. The plumbing was ghastly, their landlady disobligingly laissez-faire. Barcelona, Ipanema, Crete, Capri, Cape Town. Or was it waterfront at all? He isn't sure. One city or another, what did it matter. Eventually neither of them wanted to stay.
"You just don't give a shit," said Eames. The zipper of his suitcase came apart in his hand, and he tore it open the rest of the way, like a butcher.
Arthur leaned against the dresser and crossed his arms to nail his heart in place. "About what," he asked.
"About anything," said Eames. "What are you doing? You're just going to stand there?"
"I don't want to get in your way," said Arthur.
"You don't want-- Arthur," said Eames, "I'm going to leave," a drop of lucid patience in his frustration, as though he hoped Arthur would finally get it if only he explained it well enough. As though that had been the problem all along, just a few crossed wires. What did he expect, oh, I see now, please don't go, I love you?
He had been telling him and telling him, hadn't he, and whose fault was it that Eames refused to hear it? Whose fault was it that Eames pretended not to hear it, relishing only the feel of Arthur bucking underneath him, fighting his hold. Only ever content with a malcontent, only stooping to love what didn't love him back.
In the words of the sages of old, I probably should have seen it coming. But how our own want blinds us. Maybe I ought to have remained feral for you, but what you don't know is, I never was when it came to you. Like I'd been bred for the indoors, I couldn't voice half the things I meant to say. You have no idea how long I've wanted--
Eames paused with his hand on a pile of shirts, looking at Arthur like he was insane.
"Did you ever want this at all?" asked Eames. "Any of it?"
"I'm not fucking answering that," said Arthur, because there was only ever one right answer, and Eames ought to have known it. Eames had to know it. What was the good of breathing sound into it, when it was exactly what he didn't want to hear?
Inside the emptied house, Arthur stood with his back and both his palms braced against their door, because he knew he'd run out if he didn't stop himself. How he shook.
+
Might as well be at the airport, Eames told the driver, but let's take the scenic route. He watched the road unfurl behind them through the side mirror, the curves of the highway coming loose. The radio meandered through a jazz standard. Having contemplated the purr of the snares for three or four exits, Eames sat back, and drummed his fingers on the seat.
"Something wrong?" asked the driver.
"Isn't it funny," said Eames, "when the one person you thought might care enough to mourn for you-- well, it doesn't matter. Nothing's wrong."
As though you would have ever needed me at your funeral, when you could do the job yourself. It's not so difficult, do it just like you mourned your own disavowal of me, rending your garments and bathing yourself in ash. Your little taxicab hearse. What sort of game is it to hold down someone who doesn't want to leave, to leave someone who would have held you down if only they'd been brave enough to try? Did I fight you too hard, just like you wanted me to?
Long past sundown when Eames's ride came to a stop, Arthur was nursing his gin and tonic, face in the crook of his elbow. Bastard, he said, though past the pulse of the music and his drunken tongue, he could hardly make any sense of himself either. The bartender shook his shoulder.
"Sir," she said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to--"
"No, I'm fine," said Arthur, "just tired. Please, it's been a long day. Could I have-- no, wait, I'll finish the one I've got here. I'm all right. I won't give you any trouble, I'm not a rowdy drunk anyway. Can you hear any of what I'm saying? Isn't it a bit loud in here?"
And honestly he didn't catch much of what was asked him later, come here often or what's your name, but the hand on his waist was clear enough a conversation without words. He felt sloppy, a puddle on the floor for someone to mop up. Someone, sweep me into my skin and sew me closed. He laughed, because there wasn't anything he had to say, and he laughed, and he couldn't stop, a charging locomotive with its brakes out of commission.
"You okay?" asked whatever his name was, something blunt and thick and fucking stupid like Bruce, or maybe Chad. If it had been an English name.
"Why does everyone keep asking me that," said Arthur. "He's such a bastard."
"Yeah, he is," said whatever, his hand sliding in under Arthur's shirt, thank god.
They even had speakers installed in the goddamn restroom. For a frantic minute when the most important thing in the world seemed like grappling with the zippers on their pants, it was almost welcome, the thudding of the bass line torquing his heartbeat to its rhythm. Won't anything else be kind enough to do my job for me? he thought. The wind to breathe in my stead, someone else to live out my life. All I'd need to know is how it ends.
Without warning, the fever drained from him, and the whole performance of lust seemed absurd. Bruce or Chad, built blunt and thick as his name, pawing at Arthur's belt. Less than clean shaven, solid hands. Was that a hint of ink beneath the neckline of his shirt? Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, what am I doing. Arthur pulled away, jerking his jacket back onto his shoulders.
"Get the fuck off me," he said, and lurched out of the stall.
"What the hell, you wanted--" the voice chased him as he went, "--you fucking asshole."
A sad, predictable asshole. It was a gorgeous night out, the horizon stained by city lights, only a few stubborn stars flecking the pale expanse of the sky. Arthur walked his way back to the apartment, hands thrust in his pockets out of the cold. What does it feel like to be able to take your leaving as an excision, an extirpation, a load off your mind? To have the ability to bid good riddance to the things you renounce. Eames must be light enough to fly, cut free of my cumbersome weight from his side.
He wouldn't get out of the car, when I pulled up at the terminal, says the driver. We're here, I told him, but he didn't move. Don't you have a flight to catch? No, he said. Nowhere to be, except where I came from. But I think that was the only place he couldn't be.
Arthur wanted him to stay, he knew. He had to know it. But if this isn't all just an exquisite blame game, if the testimonies you've placed in others' mouths carry the weight of the truth, then how possibly-- how could you not have heard me asking you to stay? What were you listening for instead? You, so keen you thrilled me, never missing a single thing.
Somehow years' worth of prayers slipped right by you, and I don't know why or how it could have happened. Did it happen? I don't know where your lies stop, Eames. I don't know where they begin. Arthur swings the cab door closed behind him and it crumbles on impact, a heap of grains at his feet.
+
08.
In its masquerade as a humdrum office block, metal and glass, Arthur doesn't recognize the building from the outside. But it's unmistakable as soon as he steps in; the soft creak of the wooden floor, the wooden steps, the landlady's geraniums sunning themselves on the lobby windowsill. A quiet breeze puffs in past the curtains, stirring his hair. It's a handful of space he can navigate blind, only a staircase away from home. There's no sand to be seen anywhere.
Ten months since he locked the door and returned the keys. A long span for radio silence, but just a step over the threshold for memories. He dusts them out from where he's kept them under lock and key, like a photo album tucked away beneath a pile of winter sweaters, a sheaf of envelopes grown brittle over time.
Because he remembers his remembrance:
What are you thinking of? asked Eames, voice rolling in his chest under Arthur's ear.
Oh, you know, said Arthur. Nothing in particular. A thump, a thump, a thump. He caught a whiff of lemon, fleeting enough that he wanted to trace it to the vendors outside, but probably it was the landlady's air freshener. That was all right, in its own way. A wind chime, left swinging in the window by the previous tenant, began to stir.
Still warm, when the raindrops came. A sound like the beating of wings, and a flurry of dismay as awnings and parasols flowered open above the market stalls. If he'd looked out, he would have seen the colors blooming down the street, but what a perfect moment to be lazy, curled up between the mattress and Eames's arm.
A thump, a thump, a thump. The illusion of eternity, this steady assertion of health. Just keep beating, and you could live forever. Was it really an illusion, anyway, when they could stretch out time, twelve whole years in one at the mere pinprick of a needle? With Eames's heartbeat in one ear and the rain in the other, the lemon and wind chime winding around them, Arthur folded the memory away.
For the sort of rainy day when he'd have to look for cover. It wasn't a rift he was dreading, not the two of them running from each other. That wasn't it. Only, when everything had an end to come to, there were bodies waiting to fall apart, the current of time to thrash against. More fears to harbor than he could even name.
But right then, he was happy, the moment pure and sharp as crystal when he held his breath. A perfect aching instance of bliss. No matter what we'll run up against, he thought, remember that once, there wasn't a single thing I wanted to change. That I, too, knew a rapture that I wished would last forever.
That's rare, said Eames.
What, asked Arthur, muffled.
You, like this, said Eames. At rest. His hand threaded through Arthur's hair.
Home, the provenance of artifacts. All those shards scattered through limbo where they didn't belong, vestiges of scent and sound. Lemon, the chime, the shift of wood beneath his feet. Maybe Eames had left them there-- or maybe it was Arthur that had brought them with him, no stranger to the hoarding of memories himself, the hushed press of a precious instant to his chest. Who was he kidding, with his heels digging into his own sides, spurring him faster and faster through life?
If your heart is a volcano-- well, listen. No one can run fast enough to leave himself behind. With all his hunger for an existence less than human, to be a creature of lava and light, a fearless silver bullet molded hot enough to burn, it was the warmth of skin on skin Arthur had always wanted to come back to. Maybe nothing perishes in a garden suspended in time, but what would you find growing there? As though there would be any heartbeat at all in something built to last an eternity.
And Eames, thinks Arthur, surprised to see me at peace. To him I was a conflagration, my flames licking down everything I touched to ashes. The bruises I gave myself, my chainsaw and my Javelin, and he must have thought I would be as fervid in love as I was in taking things apart. Were you watching for smoke on the horizon? You were. So convinced I would set the world on fire for you, so intent on waiting for the explosions in my wake that you never heard me calling your name.
What was it that Madigan said. You really think that's why he put this warehouse here? So that you could look at it and feel thankful? The warehouse was there because Eames was peering into it, turning it over in his hands like a snowglobe, desperate to glean the truth from it. Chapels, bars, scouring all the corners, wringing the fabric of his memories for every last drop of meaning. Did Arthur ever want me? He didn't, did he?
And with his ears tuned to a louder sound, all he heard in every empy room was the silence echoing back at him, only telling him what he thought he knew. My voice just a low hum under his radar. Just because he liked the fight in me didn't mean he liked me any less at rest. He didn't love me for my unattainability, but in spite of it. He wanted me to want him-- eight years he was listening for me--
I wanted you, Eames. We've been at war with the same demons; hushing me even quieter, setting you firmer in your deafened ways. You were the sort to never leave a wound alone, prodding it and tearing at it until it bled fresh. Me, executioner, harpooneer, too eager to cauterize any paper cut with a blowtorch.
This thorn between us. You called it not remembering enough, and I called it remembering too much. You thought you could stare it down, and I thought it would disappear if I closed my eyes to it. Wasn't it stupid of us-- both of us? Do you know we've been going at this fight the wrong way round? Are you still listening? Am I loud enough?
+
So where is he, thinks Arthur. Upstairs? Is he home, a broken suitcase on the bed, waiting for me to stop him this time? He wonders what the right first thing to say would be, a tip of his hat, Dr. Livingstone, I presume. What Eames would say in return. If he would be happy to see me, or if it would be some other expression darting across his face. God, his face. Ten months I haven't seen him looking at me.
As he stands at the foot of the stairs, peering above him like into the heights of a dark tower -- did this staircase always seem so long? -- something rubs against his shin. It's a dog that must have wandered in from outside, a ragtag and disheveled thing. Absently, Arthur reaches down to scratch behind its ears, burying his hand into a tuft of matted fur.
"Is he upstairs?" he asks.
It touches a cold nose to his palm and lies down, tail swishing in tired sweeps across the floor, too tattered to bark out an answer or a hello. Paws caked with mud. Arthur crouches down on his heels, and it nudges a little closer, rheumy eyes drooping. He keeps expecting the landlady to walk into view, armed with her hard-of-hearing English. The lobby remains empty, though. Just him and the haggard dog.
Do I know you, wonders Arthur. The way you greet me, like I was the only thing missing from your rest. Like you're ready to lie down and die, now that I've come back. Who am I to you? Close at my feet like you've been waiting for me-- have you been waiting for me?
Have you been--
--oh, mongrel. You've been waiting for me. Listening for my footsteps all these years.
He kneels, wrapping his arms around the dog, its emaciated ribcage. They're back in Arthur's chapel and young again, the heat of their bodies still foreign to each other. Eames in the light of the stained-glass windows, thumb on the inside of Arthur's elbow.
"Mongrel," he whispers, into its neck. "It's you."
It tenses in comprehension, a wary quickness it shouldn't have been able to muster up, and jerks away from him. It nearly shakes him loose, Eames nearly shakes him loose, not willing yet to be unmasked in his silent scrutiny. His reconnaissance. Arthur locks his fingers together and holds on as best as he can, trying to keep the jumping, thrashing, desperate bundle in his embrace.
Then the armful of animal turns liquid, slipping out of his grasp. Its fur shimmers, colors into rust, and the eyes that flash back at his are feral amber and gold. A fox like a puddle of mercury. Arthur just grapples and clutches it tighter, all he can do, his teeth gritted together hard enough to hurt. Jesus, he bites out.
Eames shifts form again, when the wriggling doesn't free him. Arthur finds himself with his arms looped around the neck of a deer, still fawn-soft but wild as a bronco. Hooves thump bedlam against the wood. Exhausted and frustrated, almost dashed to the ground by the bucking, he digs his nails into Eames and throws all his weight behind a tackle, all six of their legs a tangle.
"Goddammit, Eames," he gasps. "I'll fucking hunt you down if I have to--"
And they're tumbling together in Eames's grey wool coat, as awkward a mess of limbs as ever. The collision is a graceless, earthy, beautiful thing that knocks the breath out of both of them, a heavier impact in Eames's human shape than they were prepared for, and for a minute they lie sprawled on the floor, half on top of each other, panting. The rasp of their heaving dissolves into the balmy silence.
Eames is too close to make out in his entirety, but Arthur is caught in the half-parted pause of his mouth, listening for thunder. He's not changed much. Lost a little weight, maybe, but ten whole months like a decade, didn't it feel like an age? Eames seems to agree, lying there mute, looking up at him like the sun is too bright. A smidgen embarrassed, Arthur punches him in the shoulder, hard enough that Eames coughs and rubs at the spot.
"Arthur," he says at last, a hoarse and strangled hymn.
The relief is so immense that Arthur drops his head to Eames's chest, all unwound. In an instinctive, familiar reach, Eames's arm comes to curl around his waist.
+
Midday, a hint of salt and surf in the air. Too warm for Eames's wool coat. Arthur helps him shrug it off, inch by inch. Please don't run, says Arthur, I'll chase you, but don't. Neither of us ever wanted to leave, do you know that? I have to tell you-- and he stops himself, because it's a longer story than that, meant for the liberty of clearer and undreamed skies.
There are a lot of things he says. Well-- come on, let's go. Let's get the hell out of here, Eames, and honestly, was this the best way you could think to call me, and you fucking idiot, seasoned with another punch to his shoulder, and when the taste of that isn't sharp enough, a kiss.
Eames is a trifle dazed. So much of it was an accident, he says, and the rest was the sort of gamble you take to lose. I couldn't be sure you'd show up--
The only kind of gamble you're good at, says Arthur. This was the best way you could think to tell me what you meant. But I found you, didn't I? My notions, just as outlandish as yours, and both of us with our weapons railing against the fathomless ocean. Lies, mistakes, half-swallowed words a lump in our throats, choking us up. A pair of fuck-ups from the day we met, and somehow we've found the long way around. Oh, I called you so many names.
It's no certainty for Eames that Arthur has shown up at all, limbo a much stranger place than can give rise to a convincing mirage. Totems only go so far. Has it happened before, asks Arthur, me coming to fish you out? Eames shakes his head, but they're in the sort of maze where suspicion is a virtue.
Can't fall any deeper, though, says Arthur, a haphazard stab at cheer. Eames is good enough to laugh. Arthur charts the fine lines of his kindness with the tip of his finger. If only we'd been rooted to the ground like trees, pushed up against each other with no room to look away. Maybe if we didn't have the whole world to run across.
Against all odds, says Eames, I think you really must be him.
Don't be too sure just yet, Arthur chides him. Tell me again, later, with our feet on solid ground.
Anytime, says Eames.
+
09.
Their bathroom sink had stopped working. Arthur fiddled with the hot spigot and then with the cold, clockwise and counterclockwise, only drawing forth a dim gurgle of discontent from somewhere beyond the wall. Still nothing, when the front door creaked open.
Well? he asked, and Eames called back, she says we ought to leave it be. She'll ask someone to look at it. Arthur gave the valves another experimental, futile twist. At least it's still working in the bathtub, he said, half to console himself.
Maybe she'd meant it, and maybe if they'd waited long enough, someone would have eventually come to help them. Or if they'd called someone themselves, or if they'd rolled up their sleeves and torn away the tiles, delving into the labyrinthine rust with a wrench and a flashlight to guide them on their way. Waiting was no chore, they thought, and didn't mind the inconvenience too terribly much. Craning their heads over the bathtub to brush their teeth, perched on the lip, laughing through a lather of shaving cream. The twinge in their backs a fine joke.
Only, they never did last the winter. The frost was a sheen on the windowpanes when Arthur locked the door behind him.
"So we'll fix it," Arthur says now, thinking of their sink running dry as dust. "We'll go home and we'll try again. No more of going through life with your best years behind you, or too far ahead to reach for-- if you follow me up, we'll do it better this time around. Everything we can think of. And if you don't--"
"What do you mean," asks Eames, "if I don't?"
"I want you to come on your own two feet," says Arthur. "It should be okay for you to stay under until you think I'm gone topside, so as long as you don't start forgetting where you are. Look, Eames, I came for you, but I need you to believe it. I need it to be your call to make. Before we break the surface, you can turn back whenever you like."
"Arthur--" begins Eames.
"I won't look behind," says Arthur. "I promise."
In the end, it isn't nostalgia that turns us to pillars of salt. Only our fear that we must have lost something important along the way, buried invisible in the indent of our own tracks. Whatever it is, we think, we'll never get it back. Some of us turn back and kneel in the sand, ever swept onward, looking in vain until our eyes burn hot. Some of us choose to fly faster. But god, all the things we could be, unshackled from that dread--
Water starts to cascade down the steps, seeping into the thirsty wood, welling up damp when Arthur shifts his weight. He takes a step and wonders if he might hear Eames behind him, the clearing of his throat or the the scraping of his soles. Some sign of life, still. He can't. Just the faint, soft murmur of the faucet upstairs, but that's all right. The real faith is in trusting that the world remains with you, even when you close your eyes.
Droplets bead on the ceiling. The trickle turns to a gush, soaking Arthur's shoes, cold and clear. A step, then another. Well, then, river run. The water rises to his ankles, strong enough to sway him off balance. A churning, frothing rapid, growing deeper yet. The weight of everything stacked between them and waking. Follow the river flow. He puts a hand on the wall and keeps scaling his way home, upstream, up waterfalls.
At his knees, it starts to slow him down. There's a light to the water, flowing from some bright height, like home is where they can drown awake at last. Have you ever watched the sky from the placid bottom of a pool, the sun webbed on the surface a hundred miles above you? You thought it a different world. Arthur shivers, drenched in the ice of mountains. What a lonely walk it is, only the roar of the water for company. No; somewhere behind him, Eames is struggling, ungainly through the current. Just because he's a little out of sight-- take another step. Hang in there, Arthur shouts for him. The flood lifts him off his feet, and he wades through it with his hands, his fingers numb. The spray stings his cheeks. Louder and louder the water rushes, the squeeze of it vice-tight around his chest.
Don't look behind. In the bone-chill and lungful of mist, Arthur coughs, each foot forward a slip of memory in his breast pocket. Hang in there. Let's leave. Always, you carry your love with you. The real faith is in remembering it. Eames's hand, warm over the bruises at his elbow, brushing like a kiss over the jag of scar tissue on his shoulder. The loose spill of Eames's body under the sheets, time and space enough to dream an architect's dreams. A dancing jukebox in the corner of a forgotten bar. The sudden hot streak of a flash of detail, like the muscles in Eames's jaw pulling tight. The nick of skin where he'd cut himself shaving. The sizzle of his cigarette, a burn down the length of Arthur's spine. The smell of the rain.
Every breath they take a lionsong. They climb.
05.
He knows it's just a dumb animal response, not much more than the drooling of a dog taught to listen for a bell, but Arthur puts his hand on the door in front of him and all his blood runs hot. The vertigo of his racing heart. It's a little thing that he can't help, what his skin remembers-- what his bones will cling to ten months after he's turned and left.
Sand rustles under his feet, like ball bearings nudging him forward. He knows this bar. Years ago when he walked into it, the jukebox was a flashing, living thing, whirring in the corner, dancing for a dollar. He remembers eyeing it as he climbed up onto a stool, elbows on the plexiglass expanse of the counter. The lights behind the bartender were neon blue and green. What the hell kind of place is this, he thought, and ordered a martini because he had no idea what else to do.
A second, when he drained the bottom of the first. His phone stayed blank. It wasn't a team he knew entirely well; the extractor was a well-respected veteran he'd never worked with before, and despite the clear aridity of his Pacific Northwest accent over the phone, Arthur half pictured him a Sean Connery with a beard like bristle. The chemist, he'd run something with a couple months back, but he wasn't sure he could pick her out in a crowd. The architect was a new recruit he'd never even heard of, and then there was Eames-- tardy like the rest of them, wherever he was.
"Eames?" someone said from further down the bar, like they were plucking the name from his reverie. "No, not yet, but I intend to steer clear of him as best as I can. I've done some asking around. With what I've heard of him so far, I'll count myself lucky if we can just wrap this job up without him fucking us over."
Arthur eyed him over the rim of his glass. Mid-twenties, weak jowls, one foot jittering against the leg of his chair. And you must be our architect. Glib and desperate to impress the extractor, who sat hunched over in a parka with his back to Arthur. Some juvie graduate who flunked out of a design school somewhere, arrogant enough to assume the criminal lifestyle would suit him. Someone's going to have to wipe up the mess that idiot makes, thought Arthur. Guess I'm playing babysitter on this one. He tapped his empty glass for the bartender.
"Just a lot of really foul stuff," -- god, he was still at it -- "and not just about him being a dick or whatever, because hey, I get it, we're not the good guys here. We gotta be dicks. I'm a dick, I'm proud of it. But this Eames is some kind of weaselly son of a bitch, you know? Greasy spineless fuck. Isn't he English or something? Keep the hell away from him, take my word of advice. And never hire him again, what are you, nuts?"
Some clown had put Friends in Low Places on the jukebox, like the irony of it would render the bar habitable. Arthur wrapped a hand around his gibson and meditated on the lyrics; where the whiskey drowns, and the beer chases my blues away. That's right.
"Like this forging bullshit, know what I mean?" -- and it was none of Arthur's business, nothing to do with him at all -- "You get me a PASIV and I swear to god, that fucker's out of a job. Any dumb bastard could do that shit. And what, he just swans in with his play-acting and swans right back out and leaves it to the rest of us to get our hands dirty? And then laps up the paycheck anyway? The hell do we even need him for, man? He's not here, you're his boss, just fucking send the goddamn double-dealing bastard back to his fag-cave where he--"
It was Garth Brooks that made me do it, your honor. Just wasn't in the mood for his twang. Arthur didn't really intend to, but nevertheless, he found himself standing above the new architect with a stream of gin and vermouth drizzling over him from his upended martini glass. The cocktail onion hit and slid off the straggly crown of his head.
"Good morning, you asshole," said Arthur.
"What the fuck," spluttered their architect, stumbling to his feet, bar stool crashing to the floor.
"Yes, well," said Arthur, "save the rest of it and say it to his fucking face," and clocked him as hard as he could.
It caught him just under the cheekbone, a little lower than he'd aimed. I gave it my best, that's what counts, thought Arthur, as their architect fell in a heap of stainless steel chairs and the bartender came rushing over from behind the plexiglass counter. The dull throb in his knuckles felt like a medal of honor, the adrenaline like a cool flood of mint and winter air. I didn't mean to cause a big scene, just give me an hour and then--
"Arthur," said the man in the parka, "Jesus Christ."
He turned to find Eames staring at him, eyes wide.
+
This is what happened:
There in the middle of the havoc, the racket of the mob, Eames reached out a hand and took him by the elbow, quiet and slow. He put his thumb to the skin beneath the rolled-up edge of Arthur's sleeve, so goddamn careful that Arthur thought his knees would give out from the rush of heat inside him. Oh, god, how it burned. Eames could probably feel it, that thrum of blood under his finger, calling his name, inviting him in. Arthur grabbed blindly at Eames's shoulder, unsure if it was eiderdown or muscle he was clutching at, dizzy with the solemn brush of Eames's thumb where the bruises had washed away. Soft as a caress over a string drawn taut.
Eames, he began, and had to bite his lip just to keep from screaming.
How strange it is, like the trembling of the earth under your feet, to know the sudden weight of your own want. The crushing inertia of the years left voiceless. Whatever Eames saw in his face when he looked up, whatever it was that made Eames curl his hand around the back of his head and kiss him, it couldn't have been anything less than an avalanche. The colors of the bar swam like northern lights.
Arthur opened up into the kiss because he was shaking apart, unsteady as a man pulled from the edge of death. The taste of vodka and coffee, bittersweet and warm, barely tethering his feet to the ground. And the old apostasy wasn't enough to hold him back from prayer when he closed his eyes and thought, Mother Mary, I don't know how to let him go.
+
+
"I told-- I told you it would fade," said Arthur, stuttering over the hitch in his voice. "Once I was off the Trihypnyl, it was only a matter of time before--"
"God, look at you. What a live wire," said Eames. "What'd you sock him for, anyway?"
"I don't know," said Arthur. "What were you letting him step all over you for?"
Eames didn't answer, only ghosted his teeth over the shell of Arthur's ear. He laughed when his hand caught in Arthur's belt buckle, and Arthur felt the sound wash hot across the nape of his neck, unraveling him stitch by stitch, every seam he'd painstakingly drawn closed and simmered under. That's all right, though, isn't it. I came this far to let you undo me. He lay back and sank into the hotel sheets, thirsty.
"You fucking hooligan," said Eames, unbearably gentle. "I want to fuck the metal straight out of you."
Or maybe he said mettle, but Arthur was hardly listening. Yes, he thought, yes, please. Under his clothes, Eames was an edifice, terra incognita where the dragons lay coiled. Lands that cartographers dreamed of knowing. Mesmerized, Arthur mapped him with his fingers and his tongue, swam up his rivers of ink. Seven miles across, a granite wall.
By the time Eames had him pinned to the bed, they were flushed and out of breath, the sheets a tangled heap around their ankles. Under the hazy glow of the bedside lamp, Eames was made of gold. Shadows pooled around the tense knot of his smile.
"You have no idea," he said, "how long I've wanted--"
And that was true, of course; neither of them knew the private histories they'd harbored away, the ever-sinces and the when-we-firsts. But there were better things for them to do right then than one-up each other, and the thick, damp line of Eames's cock seemed a better prospect than idle conversation. Save your confessions for Sunday, why don't you. More peevishly than he meant to, Arthur bucked up against Eames's hands on his shoulders, straining under the hold.
Eames went deathly still, his grip tightening. For a long suspended moment Arthur thought something had gone wrong, that he'd fucked it up somehow-- and then Eames tilted his head, his eyes wild in the lamplight. Darker and stranger than he remembered.
"What," asked Arthur, too loud in the sudden silence.
"I figured that's how it would go," said Eames, and leaned down and kissed him again.
Shit, thought Arthur, what's going on, because the touch unnerved him. It was a measured, dangerous thing, almost angry in its restraint. What was Eames asking for, anyway? As though he'd caged a wildcat, waiting for it to lunge at him, anxious that it wouldn't jump for his throat. Afraid that something or someone had managed to tame it--
Then, with a start, he knew it; Jesus, he wants me to fight him. The narrative Eames had fashioned for them was written in the contrarian set of Arthur's jaw, an homage to every recalcitrant bone in his body. That's the way he figured it would go. That's how he figured Arthur was.
I'm not who you think I am, Arthur would have told him, but when he bit at Eames's lips as a prelude to his full irritation, Eames made a strangled sound and shot out his hand, fumbling with the condom on the coffee table. The ashtray toppled to the carpet, a dull report. Like checking for blood, Eames licked his mouth and swiped at it with the back of his hand.
Maybe they were both out of their minds, but in that moment, Arthur was less annoyed than thrilled. What Eames was looking for wasn't triumph or conquest, but the exhilaration of a leased happiness. For a bird of prey to take a shine to him, to fold its unpinioned wings and let him smooth down its feathers for a minute or two. And the thought of Eames wanting him bad enough to hold him down-- that, Arthur liked.
It was the wrong foot to get off on, wasn't it. Predicating their time together on a promise of flight. You make me want to stay just to prove you wrong, thought Arthur, through the slow welcome ache of Eames pushing inside him. You make me want to run just to prove you right.
Later, Eames put his ear to the tremor of Arthur's chest, like listening for distant horses. Languid in his exhaustion, Arthur allowed the weight to linger, only shivering a little as Eames traced absent patterns over his skin.
"It's pounding so fast," said Eames, low, like he was in awe. "I did that, didn't I? It was me?"
+
It was a wonder you could hear it at all over the clamor of your own doubt, thinks Arthur, toeing at the sand across the floorboards. Maybe if you'd really listened, if you'd taken a little time to mull over the frantic Morse tap of my heart, you would have known the answer I gave you years ago. What you had lying in the palm of your hand all along.
It was me, you said, as though the most you could ever do to me was make me come hard enough to need to catch my breath. Of course it was you, Eames. You fucking asshole. Isn't that what made you run, in the end? Because I let you down by asking for you?
The recess of the bar crooks into a corridor behind the jukebox, a passage through the wall that Arthur doesn't remember. The creak of wood under his feet, that he can blame on the aging floor, but he can't explain away the breeze at the back of his neck. Warm and light, not the unforgiving blast of a limbo sandstorm. Familiar, but nothing he can place. An artifact.
+
06.
A different bar in a different city, a different time. This one is a bit more straightforward. Carpeted floors, leather seats on the bar stools, and the music was just loud enough to drown out the bark of Eames's laugh. Arthur only guessed it from the twist of his mouth, the incredulity in his face.
"Fancy seeing you here," said Eames.
"You've had enough," said Arthur, and yanked his drink away from him. Eames reached for it. Not in the mood for keep-away, Arthur took a long pull from it instead-- a nutty dark beer he might have enjoyed at any other time. The sort of thing he might have liked tasting on Eames's tongue, if things had been simpler between them. Eames watched him a moment, then relented, swiveling back toward the counter.
"So call me a cab," he said, eyes fixed on the liquor shelf. "Small town, isn't it? Small sort of world, I didn't think you'd end up tripping over me here, of all places. Sorry I got in your way, must have ruined your evening. Should I leave?"
"How've you been," asked Arthur.
"Please, spare me the pity," said Eames. "If you gave the slightest fuck at all, we'd be having a different conversation right now. Either this is really some unfortunate coincidence or you're just here to gloat, and whichever way, I think you can do me the courtesy of letting me alone now, thank you."
Arthur sits at the empty bar, legs dangling, the bottles on the shelf full of sand. He wouldn't look at me, he remembers. That was how he knew Eames was lying without meaning to, skirting the truth like ice he was afraid to tread on. And that was how he knew Eames would break the silence first, too restless to let the indifferent noise do the talking for them.
"But I don't understand," said Eames, at last, "what could have possibly scared you into running."
"Any number of things," said Arthur.
"You're the fucking bogeyman," said Eames. "You're the stuff of nightmares, Arthur. You don't scare. Least of all by anything I have to offer."
"You have a lot of notions," said Arthur. "Maybe a lot of them are wrong."
"Yeah?" asked Eames. "You think I'm wrong?"
Of course he was. It wasn't coincidence that brought Arthur there, and he hadn't come to gloat. A check-up, Eames. Half to see how you've been doing, and half to see how I've been doing. If you would still frighten me as much as ever. Because that was what Arthur ran from; the prospect of Eames, of coming to know him too well.
Not the dread of ennui, or the festering of stagnant water. Not boredom. But a sinking of the heart you feel when you hold an animal in your arms, and your fingers brush over that velvet inch of throat you'd slit to let out its blood. It's a terrifying thing to see someone in his entirety. To know him too well, to get too used to him, to learn where to touch him, where to stab him, how to love him.
"And here you come, pleased as you please, slipping back onstage like nothing ever happened," said Eames. "Well, then, welcome back. What do you want? I'm still here for you to mangle, I suppose. Ready when you are. In the immortal fucking words of Khalil fucking Gibran, if your heart is a fucking volcano--"
To know when he was drunk, long before the messy slur of his tirades. Arthur motioned for a glass of water, nudged it toward Eames with the back of his hand, waiting it out. It wasn't the last time he would run, and Eames would eventually be the last one to bolt-- but the gash was raw, then, and neither of them any good with forecasts. It was worth a rant or two, severe weather ahead or not. Arthur still understands.
"But I do wonder, Arthur, have you ever thought of this the other way round?" asked Eames. "How things would go then?"
"How things would go when?" asked Arthur.
"If I was the one who up and disappeared," said Eames. "If I was the one who strolled in here, snatching your drink from you, and you hadn't the slightest idea why I'd been gone, or where I'd been, or why the bloody hell I was back. Would we be this civil, I wonder? Could you manage to restrain yourself from shooting me in the fucking face?"
There were a great many things that needed to be said to that, starting with Eames, I am not actually in the habit of pulling my gun on every little annoyance, but it didn't seem the moment for quibbles. And Eames wasn't really being civil at all, was he? Or maybe Arthur had just learned too well how to read the barometer of his unhappiness, every familiarity a handful of clay, building a full person out of him. God, he couldn't bear it.
It wouldn't be the same thing at all, Arthur meant to say, if you were the one to run. It wouldn't be the same because I know, beyond a shred of doubt, why I've come to find you here. With you, it would only be guessing games. That's why it would be different. At least, like this, I know that I--
Listen, Eames. I still--
But there it was again, the truth too obvious to offer up naked on its silver platter. Too visceral for the open air, and Arthur steadied himself with a mouthful of beer, letting it quench him to some semblance of composure. It wasn't the moment for unwanted truths, either. There would be better chances. They had time. And the thought of confession was like watching the fall of a stone cast into an abyss, because wouldn't that turn him human, someone with the capacity for regret? Someone too mortal for Eames to love? What a pair they'd make then, two bodies of meat and bone, lost in the wilderness, dumbly waiting for time and their own piece of shit karma to catch up with them. With nothing to look forward to but decay.
Arthur swallowed, still a little dry, and inched his hand on top of Eames's. His fingers flinched under the touch, and Arthur thought, I know. I'm just as scared as you are. But the warm, rough ridge of his knuckles and the way he didn't move away, surely that was a testament to want in the midst of terror. It had to mean something.
Instead of everything else he could have said, Arthur bent his head to Eames's ear and murmured, low enough to hear over the music, sorry. Eames wavered, like the mirage of an oasis, and turned toward him.
+
They left the city by train. Bruises dotting them black and blue beneath their clothes, the angry trace of teeth. The sky rushing past them, too, was mottled purple, yellows and greens, the remnants of a bad memory.
"Storm coming," said Arthur.
"No," said Eames. "It always looks like that around here."
Around where? Where was here, where were they-- what were they doing? All Arthur remembers is the throb of his tailbone. The severe upholstery on their seats. The faint spice of Eames's cologne, a sheen of sweat and musk. He leaned his head on Eames's shoulder, just to test the waters, and Eames only tensed a moment before he shifted and carved out a little nook for him. So they were all right, if only because Arthur wouldn't take anything else for an answer.
Sleep on the go had never been his forte, though with his eyes closed and in the lull of the train, it was close enough an approximation of repose. He really was sorry, honest to god. It was the truth, if not the full truth. He never meant for any of it to happen, but he'd thought of it too much, when he knew he shouldn't have. All the blood he'd drawn from Eames between their sheets, all the blood he'd offered up in exchange, he meant as an apology.
"Arthur," said Eames, under his breath.
He didn't answer. You're cinnamon and nutmeg and salt on my tongue, Eames. Black pepper and leather and smoke, the crunch of snow through a Scandinavian forest. The rasp of your stubble on the insides of my thighs.
Eames didn't say anything, either. Just ran a finger across Arthur's wrist, the kind of touch so gentle it could set you on fire, like he didn't know what would happen if he held on too tight. Five feet nine inches of spun sugar, bullshit. Arthur could have wept at the injustice of it, only he'd forgotten how to breathe.
How dare he treat me like I was too good for him. Arthur didn't know where to begin, drowning in him, nothing for his fists to pound against. So he did the only thing he could-- kept quiet and waited for the train to jolt him awake, listening to the soft click of Eames's totem against his fingernails. Will you stop checking it, I'm still here, he didn't say. I came for you. I never could stay away.
A flash of gold glints off the sand in the liquor bottles, the late light slanting through the glass. That's not what Cobb said, is it, not the days without edges blurring into one another, fifty years as seamless as any sluggish afternoon. If it isn't a sunset to mark time, then it's a sunset to make a point. I must be nearing the end of something, thinks Arthur, and puts his hand on a westward window, the silhouette of his flesh translucent against the glow. You and your metaphors.
A horn honks outside, bleary, cutting through the haze. Arthur creaks the window open and sees a car idling at the door.
"Taxi?" shouts the driver. "You called for a taxi, no?"
With a shrill, bright sound behind him, a bottle bursts apart on the shelf. It's not quite gunfire, but Arthur ducks by instinct anyway. Sand streams down the racks. The bottle next to it shatters in turn, a domino explosion of silver dust, and the edge of the counter begins to dissolve into grains. A third bottle, then a fourth. A bar stool collapses and scatters on the floor.
"Yeah," says Arthur. "Yeah, I think so-- hang on."
He darts outside, the desert wind at his back. There's no need for him to linger on the wasteland left behind, and he only bothers to look after he tumbles into the backseat of the cab, shutting out the howl of the ravage. The sand beats against the frame of the car, a pitter-patter cool as rain. Only the dim echo of white noise corralled where it can't hurt him.
+
07.
"I suppose I ought to know you," says Arthur, shaking out the collar of his shirt.
"Not necessarily," says the driver. "These are his memories, not yours." He's a pair of eyes in the rearview mirror, a shoulder in a khaki jacket past the bulletproof partition.
"But I'm implicated in them," says Arthur. "I've come this far, I saw what he's been making of limbo. Still lying to my fucking face. Jesus Christ, like he ever wanted me to want him, when he just fucking turned tail and fled the instant he realized that he-- haven't I been in your cab before?"
"No," says the driver, "you haven't."
"So--" says Arthur.
"So the question is," says the driver, "why not?"
The view is dreary, cities looming and fading away in the distance like through a fog. Arthur tilts his forehead against the window, and his breath steams up a damp patch of condensation, a sudden tinge of chill to the air that threads inside. Winter, he thinks, when I wasn't with him.
"He had a suitcase," says the driver. "I thought he was off to the airport, so I helped him load it up into the trunk. He pulled the door shut and didn't tell me where he was going. When I asked, he just told me to drive wherever, and I would have thrown him out if he hadn't taken out his wallet then. Stranger people come and go, I guess. He didn't seem like trouble so I let him be. Do you remember? One of those grey wool coats, we were heading into December. Do you remember what it looks like from the back?"
+
Just once, seared into him. Had he grown complacent? But the view of the coat he knows best is from the front, half of Eames's face tucked away beneath a scarf, his cheeks ruddy with the wind. He didn't think he'd ever need to watch Eames walk away-- although if it was any consolation, Eames seemed every bit as startled to find himself doing it.
Rewind the tape a little further. Adrenaline, endorphin, it was the thrill that had shoved them into each other again, a train collision. At LAX with Cobb stumbling past the baggage carousel in his sailor's trance, Eames knew to wait for Arthur before they'd said a word to each other.
"Seems like we're on again," said Arthur, congenial, as Eames fell into step beside him.
"Can't think of a better way to celebrate," said Eames, "can you?"
He looked at Arthur and the stars danced in his eyes, lotus flowers spurting to life on the vinyl floor beneath his heels. Somewhere, an oboe blew a long note and a celestial orchestra began to tune. That'll happen when you've just defied a decade's worth of industry wisdom. It gets to you, just a little. Arthur grabbed him by the front of his shirt and kissed him.
They lived like kings in the daze of triumph, punch-drunk with their own immortality. Hopping from city to city just because they could, conquering continents, drinking oceans. But in the end it fared no better than their old song and dance. That'll happen when you catapult yourself into a tangle of knots you've never learned how to undo. A soft place to land, but when it's time to come up for air, you have to cut your way out.
By the time they were ready to ruin things for good, they'd found themselves a second-floor apartment somewhere, a bedroom and kitchen that Arthur had been maudlin enough for a few months to start calling home. The plumbing was ghastly, their landlady disobligingly laissez-faire. Barcelona, Ipanema, Crete, Capri, Cape Town. Or was it waterfront at all? He isn't sure. One city or another, what did it matter. Eventually neither of them wanted to stay.
"You just don't give a shit," said Eames. The zipper of his suitcase came apart in his hand, and he tore it open the rest of the way, like a butcher.
Arthur leaned against the dresser and crossed his arms to nail his heart in place. "About what," he asked.
"About anything," said Eames. "What are you doing? You're just going to stand there?"
"I don't want to get in your way," said Arthur.
"You don't want-- Arthur," said Eames, "I'm going to leave," a drop of lucid patience in his frustration, as though he hoped Arthur would finally get it if only he explained it well enough. As though that had been the problem all along, just a few crossed wires. What did he expect, oh, I see now, please don't go, I love you?
He had been telling him and telling him, hadn't he, and whose fault was it that Eames refused to hear it? Whose fault was it that Eames pretended not to hear it, relishing only the feel of Arthur bucking underneath him, fighting his hold. Only ever content with a malcontent, only stooping to love what didn't love him back.
In the words of the sages of old, I probably should have seen it coming. But how our own want blinds us. Maybe I ought to have remained feral for you, but what you don't know is, I never was when it came to you. Like I'd been bred for the indoors, I couldn't voice half the things I meant to say. You have no idea how long I've wanted--
Eames paused with his hand on a pile of shirts, looking at Arthur like he was insane.
"Did you ever want this at all?" asked Eames. "Any of it?"
"I'm not fucking answering that," said Arthur, because there was only ever one right answer, and Eames ought to have known it. Eames had to know it. What was the good of breathing sound into it, when it was exactly what he didn't want to hear?
Inside the emptied house, Arthur stood with his back and both his palms braced against their door, because he knew he'd run out if he didn't stop himself. How he shook.
+
Might as well be at the airport, Eames told the driver, but let's take the scenic route. He watched the road unfurl behind them through the side mirror, the curves of the highway coming loose. The radio meandered through a jazz standard. Having contemplated the purr of the snares for three or four exits, Eames sat back, and drummed his fingers on the seat.
"Something wrong?" asked the driver.
"Isn't it funny," said Eames, "when the one person you thought might care enough to mourn for you-- well, it doesn't matter. Nothing's wrong."
As though you would have ever needed me at your funeral, when you could do the job yourself. It's not so difficult, do it just like you mourned your own disavowal of me, rending your garments and bathing yourself in ash. Your little taxicab hearse. What sort of game is it to hold down someone who doesn't want to leave, to leave someone who would have held you down if only they'd been brave enough to try? Did I fight you too hard, just like you wanted me to?
Long past sundown when Eames's ride came to a stop, Arthur was nursing his gin and tonic, face in the crook of his elbow. Bastard, he said, though past the pulse of the music and his drunken tongue, he could hardly make any sense of himself either. The bartender shook his shoulder.
"Sir," she said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to--"
"No, I'm fine," said Arthur, "just tired. Please, it's been a long day. Could I have-- no, wait, I'll finish the one I've got here. I'm all right. I won't give you any trouble, I'm not a rowdy drunk anyway. Can you hear any of what I'm saying? Isn't it a bit loud in here?"
And honestly he didn't catch much of what was asked him later, come here often or what's your name, but the hand on his waist was clear enough a conversation without words. He felt sloppy, a puddle on the floor for someone to mop up. Someone, sweep me into my skin and sew me closed. He laughed, because there wasn't anything he had to say, and he laughed, and he couldn't stop, a charging locomotive with its brakes out of commission.
"You okay?" asked whatever his name was, something blunt and thick and fucking stupid like Bruce, or maybe Chad. If it had been an English name.
"Why does everyone keep asking me that," said Arthur. "He's such a bastard."
"Yeah, he is," said whatever, his hand sliding in under Arthur's shirt, thank god.
They even had speakers installed in the goddamn restroom. For a frantic minute when the most important thing in the world seemed like grappling with the zippers on their pants, it was almost welcome, the thudding of the bass line torquing his heartbeat to its rhythm. Won't anything else be kind enough to do my job for me? he thought. The wind to breathe in my stead, someone else to live out my life. All I'd need to know is how it ends.
Without warning, the fever drained from him, and the whole performance of lust seemed absurd. Bruce or Chad, built blunt and thick as his name, pawing at Arthur's belt. Less than clean shaven, solid hands. Was that a hint of ink beneath the neckline of his shirt? Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, what am I doing. Arthur pulled away, jerking his jacket back onto his shoulders.
"Get the fuck off me," he said, and lurched out of the stall.
"What the hell, you wanted--" the voice chased him as he went, "--you fucking asshole."
A sad, predictable asshole. It was a gorgeous night out, the horizon stained by city lights, only a few stubborn stars flecking the pale expanse of the sky. Arthur walked his way back to the apartment, hands thrust in his pockets out of the cold. What does it feel like to be able to take your leaving as an excision, an extirpation, a load off your mind? To have the ability to bid good riddance to the things you renounce. Eames must be light enough to fly, cut free of my cumbersome weight from his side.
He wouldn't get out of the car, when I pulled up at the terminal, says the driver. We're here, I told him, but he didn't move. Don't you have a flight to catch? No, he said. Nowhere to be, except where I came from. But I think that was the only place he couldn't be.
Arthur wanted him to stay, he knew. He had to know it. But if this isn't all just an exquisite blame game, if the testimonies you've placed in others' mouths carry the weight of the truth, then how possibly-- how could you not have heard me asking you to stay? What were you listening for instead? You, so keen you thrilled me, never missing a single thing.
Somehow years' worth of prayers slipped right by you, and I don't know why or how it could have happened. Did it happen? I don't know where your lies stop, Eames. I don't know where they begin. Arthur swings the cab door closed behind him and it crumbles on impact, a heap of grains at his feet.
+
08.
In its masquerade as a humdrum office block, metal and glass, Arthur doesn't recognize the building from the outside. But it's unmistakable as soon as he steps in; the soft creak of the wooden floor, the wooden steps, the landlady's geraniums sunning themselves on the lobby windowsill. A quiet breeze puffs in past the curtains, stirring his hair. It's a handful of space he can navigate blind, only a staircase away from home. There's no sand to be seen anywhere.
Ten months since he locked the door and returned the keys. A long span for radio silence, but just a step over the threshold for memories. He dusts them out from where he's kept them under lock and key, like a photo album tucked away beneath a pile of winter sweaters, a sheaf of envelopes grown brittle over time.
Because he remembers his remembrance:
What are you thinking of? asked Eames, voice rolling in his chest under Arthur's ear.
Oh, you know, said Arthur. Nothing in particular. A thump, a thump, a thump. He caught a whiff of lemon, fleeting enough that he wanted to trace it to the vendors outside, but probably it was the landlady's air freshener. That was all right, in its own way. A wind chime, left swinging in the window by the previous tenant, began to stir.
Still warm, when the raindrops came. A sound like the beating of wings, and a flurry of dismay as awnings and parasols flowered open above the market stalls. If he'd looked out, he would have seen the colors blooming down the street, but what a perfect moment to be lazy, curled up between the mattress and Eames's arm.
A thump, a thump, a thump. The illusion of eternity, this steady assertion of health. Just keep beating, and you could live forever. Was it really an illusion, anyway, when they could stretch out time, twelve whole years in one at the mere pinprick of a needle? With Eames's heartbeat in one ear and the rain in the other, the lemon and wind chime winding around them, Arthur folded the memory away.
For the sort of rainy day when he'd have to look for cover. It wasn't a rift he was dreading, not the two of them running from each other. That wasn't it. Only, when everything had an end to come to, there were bodies waiting to fall apart, the current of time to thrash against. More fears to harbor than he could even name.
But right then, he was happy, the moment pure and sharp as crystal when he held his breath. A perfect aching instance of bliss. No matter what we'll run up against, he thought, remember that once, there wasn't a single thing I wanted to change. That I, too, knew a rapture that I wished would last forever.
That's rare, said Eames.
What, asked Arthur, muffled.
You, like this, said Eames. At rest. His hand threaded through Arthur's hair.
Home, the provenance of artifacts. All those shards scattered through limbo where they didn't belong, vestiges of scent and sound. Lemon, the chime, the shift of wood beneath his feet. Maybe Eames had left them there-- or maybe it was Arthur that had brought them with him, no stranger to the hoarding of memories himself, the hushed press of a precious instant to his chest. Who was he kidding, with his heels digging into his own sides, spurring him faster and faster through life?
If your heart is a volcano-- well, listen. No one can run fast enough to leave himself behind. With all his hunger for an existence less than human, to be a creature of lava and light, a fearless silver bullet molded hot enough to burn, it was the warmth of skin on skin Arthur had always wanted to come back to. Maybe nothing perishes in a garden suspended in time, but what would you find growing there? As though there would be any heartbeat at all in something built to last an eternity.
And Eames, thinks Arthur, surprised to see me at peace. To him I was a conflagration, my flames licking down everything I touched to ashes. The bruises I gave myself, my chainsaw and my Javelin, and he must have thought I would be as fervid in love as I was in taking things apart. Were you watching for smoke on the horizon? You were. So convinced I would set the world on fire for you, so intent on waiting for the explosions in my wake that you never heard me calling your name.
What was it that Madigan said. You really think that's why he put this warehouse here? So that you could look at it and feel thankful? The warehouse was there because Eames was peering into it, turning it over in his hands like a snowglobe, desperate to glean the truth from it. Chapels, bars, scouring all the corners, wringing the fabric of his memories for every last drop of meaning. Did Arthur ever want me? He didn't, did he?
And with his ears tuned to a louder sound, all he heard in every empy room was the silence echoing back at him, only telling him what he thought he knew. My voice just a low hum under his radar. Just because he liked the fight in me didn't mean he liked me any less at rest. He didn't love me for my unattainability, but in spite of it. He wanted me to want him-- eight years he was listening for me--
I wanted you, Eames. We've been at war with the same demons; hushing me even quieter, setting you firmer in your deafened ways. You were the sort to never leave a wound alone, prodding it and tearing at it until it bled fresh. Me, executioner, harpooneer, too eager to cauterize any paper cut with a blowtorch.
This thorn between us. You called it not remembering enough, and I called it remembering too much. You thought you could stare it down, and I thought it would disappear if I closed my eyes to it. Wasn't it stupid of us-- both of us? Do you know we've been going at this fight the wrong way round? Are you still listening? Am I loud enough?
+
So where is he, thinks Arthur. Upstairs? Is he home, a broken suitcase on the bed, waiting for me to stop him this time? He wonders what the right first thing to say would be, a tip of his hat, Dr. Livingstone, I presume. What Eames would say in return. If he would be happy to see me, or if it would be some other expression darting across his face. God, his face. Ten months I haven't seen him looking at me.
As he stands at the foot of the stairs, peering above him like into the heights of a dark tower -- did this staircase always seem so long? -- something rubs against his shin. It's a dog that must have wandered in from outside, a ragtag and disheveled thing. Absently, Arthur reaches down to scratch behind its ears, burying his hand into a tuft of matted fur.
"Is he upstairs?" he asks.
It touches a cold nose to his palm and lies down, tail swishing in tired sweeps across the floor, too tattered to bark out an answer or a hello. Paws caked with mud. Arthur crouches down on his heels, and it nudges a little closer, rheumy eyes drooping. He keeps expecting the landlady to walk into view, armed with her hard-of-hearing English. The lobby remains empty, though. Just him and the haggard dog.
Do I know you, wonders Arthur. The way you greet me, like I was the only thing missing from your rest. Like you're ready to lie down and die, now that I've come back. Who am I to you? Close at my feet like you've been waiting for me-- have you been waiting for me?
Have you been--
--oh, mongrel. You've been waiting for me. Listening for my footsteps all these years.
He kneels, wrapping his arms around the dog, its emaciated ribcage. They're back in Arthur's chapel and young again, the heat of their bodies still foreign to each other. Eames in the light of the stained-glass windows, thumb on the inside of Arthur's elbow.
"Mongrel," he whispers, into its neck. "It's you."
It tenses in comprehension, a wary quickness it shouldn't have been able to muster up, and jerks away from him. It nearly shakes him loose, Eames nearly shakes him loose, not willing yet to be unmasked in his silent scrutiny. His reconnaissance. Arthur locks his fingers together and holds on as best as he can, trying to keep the jumping, thrashing, desperate bundle in his embrace.
Then the armful of animal turns liquid, slipping out of his grasp. Its fur shimmers, colors into rust, and the eyes that flash back at his are feral amber and gold. A fox like a puddle of mercury. Arthur just grapples and clutches it tighter, all he can do, his teeth gritted together hard enough to hurt. Jesus, he bites out.
Eames shifts form again, when the wriggling doesn't free him. Arthur finds himself with his arms looped around the neck of a deer, still fawn-soft but wild as a bronco. Hooves thump bedlam against the wood. Exhausted and frustrated, almost dashed to the ground by the bucking, he digs his nails into Eames and throws all his weight behind a tackle, all six of their legs a tangle.
"Goddammit, Eames," he gasps. "I'll fucking hunt you down if I have to--"
And they're tumbling together in Eames's grey wool coat, as awkward a mess of limbs as ever. The collision is a graceless, earthy, beautiful thing that knocks the breath out of both of them, a heavier impact in Eames's human shape than they were prepared for, and for a minute they lie sprawled on the floor, half on top of each other, panting. The rasp of their heaving dissolves into the balmy silence.
Eames is too close to make out in his entirety, but Arthur is caught in the half-parted pause of his mouth, listening for thunder. He's not changed much. Lost a little weight, maybe, but ten whole months like a decade, didn't it feel like an age? Eames seems to agree, lying there mute, looking up at him like the sun is too bright. A smidgen embarrassed, Arthur punches him in the shoulder, hard enough that Eames coughs and rubs at the spot.
"Arthur," he says at last, a hoarse and strangled hymn.
The relief is so immense that Arthur drops his head to Eames's chest, all unwound. In an instinctive, familiar reach, Eames's arm comes to curl around his waist.
+
Midday, a hint of salt and surf in the air. Too warm for Eames's wool coat. Arthur helps him shrug it off, inch by inch. Please don't run, says Arthur, I'll chase you, but don't. Neither of us ever wanted to leave, do you know that? I have to tell you-- and he stops himself, because it's a longer story than that, meant for the liberty of clearer and undreamed skies.
There are a lot of things he says. Well-- come on, let's go. Let's get the hell out of here, Eames, and honestly, was this the best way you could think to call me, and you fucking idiot, seasoned with another punch to his shoulder, and when the taste of that isn't sharp enough, a kiss.
Eames is a trifle dazed. So much of it was an accident, he says, and the rest was the sort of gamble you take to lose. I couldn't be sure you'd show up--
The only kind of gamble you're good at, says Arthur. This was the best way you could think to tell me what you meant. But I found you, didn't I? My notions, just as outlandish as yours, and both of us with our weapons railing against the fathomless ocean. Lies, mistakes, half-swallowed words a lump in our throats, choking us up. A pair of fuck-ups from the day we met, and somehow we've found the long way around. Oh, I called you so many names.
It's no certainty for Eames that Arthur has shown up at all, limbo a much stranger place than can give rise to a convincing mirage. Totems only go so far. Has it happened before, asks Arthur, me coming to fish you out? Eames shakes his head, but they're in the sort of maze where suspicion is a virtue.
Can't fall any deeper, though, says Arthur, a haphazard stab at cheer. Eames is good enough to laugh. Arthur charts the fine lines of his kindness with the tip of his finger. If only we'd been rooted to the ground like trees, pushed up against each other with no room to look away. Maybe if we didn't have the whole world to run across.
Against all odds, says Eames, I think you really must be him.
Don't be too sure just yet, Arthur chides him. Tell me again, later, with our feet on solid ground.
Anytime, says Eames.
+
09.
Their bathroom sink had stopped working. Arthur fiddled with the hot spigot and then with the cold, clockwise and counterclockwise, only drawing forth a dim gurgle of discontent from somewhere beyond the wall. Still nothing, when the front door creaked open.
Well? he asked, and Eames called back, she says we ought to leave it be. She'll ask someone to look at it. Arthur gave the valves another experimental, futile twist. At least it's still working in the bathtub, he said, half to console himself.
Maybe she'd meant it, and maybe if they'd waited long enough, someone would have eventually come to help them. Or if they'd called someone themselves, or if they'd rolled up their sleeves and torn away the tiles, delving into the labyrinthine rust with a wrench and a flashlight to guide them on their way. Waiting was no chore, they thought, and didn't mind the inconvenience too terribly much. Craning their heads over the bathtub to brush their teeth, perched on the lip, laughing through a lather of shaving cream. The twinge in their backs a fine joke.
Only, they never did last the winter. The frost was a sheen on the windowpanes when Arthur locked the door behind him.
"So we'll fix it," Arthur says now, thinking of their sink running dry as dust. "We'll go home and we'll try again. No more of going through life with your best years behind you, or too far ahead to reach for-- if you follow me up, we'll do it better this time around. Everything we can think of. And if you don't--"
"What do you mean," asks Eames, "if I don't?"
"I want you to come on your own two feet," says Arthur. "It should be okay for you to stay under until you think I'm gone topside, so as long as you don't start forgetting where you are. Look, Eames, I came for you, but I need you to believe it. I need it to be your call to make. Before we break the surface, you can turn back whenever you like."
"Arthur--" begins Eames.
"I won't look behind," says Arthur. "I promise."
In the end, it isn't nostalgia that turns us to pillars of salt. Only our fear that we must have lost something important along the way, buried invisible in the indent of our own tracks. Whatever it is, we think, we'll never get it back. Some of us turn back and kneel in the sand, ever swept onward, looking in vain until our eyes burn hot. Some of us choose to fly faster. But god, all the things we could be, unshackled from that dread--
Water starts to cascade down the steps, seeping into the thirsty wood, welling up damp when Arthur shifts his weight. He takes a step and wonders if he might hear Eames behind him, the clearing of his throat or the the scraping of his soles. Some sign of life, still. He can't. Just the faint, soft murmur of the faucet upstairs, but that's all right. The real faith is in trusting that the world remains with you, even when you close your eyes.
Droplets bead on the ceiling. The trickle turns to a gush, soaking Arthur's shoes, cold and clear. A step, then another. Well, then, river run. The water rises to his ankles, strong enough to sway him off balance. A churning, frothing rapid, growing deeper yet. The weight of everything stacked between them and waking. Follow the river flow. He puts a hand on the wall and keeps scaling his way home, upstream, up waterfalls.
At his knees, it starts to slow him down. There's a light to the water, flowing from some bright height, like home is where they can drown awake at last. Have you ever watched the sky from the placid bottom of a pool, the sun webbed on the surface a hundred miles above you? You thought it a different world. Arthur shivers, drenched in the ice of mountains. What a lonely walk it is, only the roar of the water for company. No; somewhere behind him, Eames is struggling, ungainly through the current. Just because he's a little out of sight-- take another step. Hang in there, Arthur shouts for him. The flood lifts him off his feet, and he wades through it with his hands, his fingers numb. The spray stings his cheeks. Louder and louder the water rushes, the squeeze of it vice-tight around his chest.
Don't look behind. In the bone-chill and lungful of mist, Arthur coughs, each foot forward a slip of memory in his breast pocket. Hang in there. Let's leave. Always, you carry your love with you. The real faith is in remembering it. Eames's hand, warm over the bruises at his elbow, brushing like a kiss over the jag of scar tissue on his shoulder. The loose spill of Eames's body under the sheets, time and space enough to dream an architect's dreams. A dancing jukebox in the corner of a forgotten bar. The sudden hot streak of a flash of detail, like the muscles in Eames's jaw pulling tight. The nick of skin where he'd cut himself shaving. The sizzle of his cigarette, a burn down the length of Arthur's spine. The smell of the rain.
Every breath they take a lionsong. They climb.