Leon/The Professional AU (Part 3/5 or 6)
Title: No One Has a Photo of This Man
Author: sneaqui
Team: Angst
Prompts: Innocence, Home
Word Count: 3600
Rating: R
Warnings: mentions of murder, (Warnings for future parts: Main character death, sexual situations involving a minor)
Notes: Sorry, guys! This story is going to be a little longer than I originally anticipated. This should come as a surprise to no one who has ever read my WIPs... Next part will be posted on Monday for the match but the last one or two parts will be posted on my journal and cross-posted to the comms.
This part is unbetaed.
Part I // Part II
Arthur wipes the Gatorade from the floor with frayed dishtowel, picks up Eames’s plastic Walgreen’s bag to clean it off too.
“Bin it.”
Arthur looks up at Eames. He’s seated at the kitchen table, staring down at its Formica top, arms lying limply in his lap.
Arthur looks down at the bag, wonders aloud, “What do you mean ‘bin it’?”
Eames shrugs, says in a small voice, “Band-Aid’s not gonna help her now, is it?”
Arthur wets his lips, tries again, “No, I mean- ‘bin it’... What does it mean?”
Eames whips his head around to hiss at Arthur, “It means put it in the garbage! Throw it away! Get it the fuck out of my sight!”
“Okay. Okay. Alright.” Arthur puts his hands up, palms out, placating. He takes the bag into the bathroom, tosses the plastic and, after regarding the brand-new first aid supplies in his hand, quietly places them in the cabinet behind the mirror.
At some point, the sirens come. Neighbors who hid in their apartments while the sound of gunshots rang out through the corridors walk out into the hallway, shake their heads and say, “Thirteen-years-old. That’s fucked up, man.”
The metallic clatter of stretchers being wheeled out of the elevator. The static and the droning electronic voices on the police radios.
Eames watches the door, as if trying to see the sounds on the other side of it.
Arthur leans back against the kitchen counter, the Beretta that’s still tucked into his trousers pressing into his spine. He puts his hands in his pockets, clears his throat. “Do you want to talk to them?”
Eames looks up, seemingly surprised to find another person in the room. “What?”
“The police. Do you want to talk to them?”
Eames’s features slacken. “Do I have to?”
“I just thought maybe you’d want to. Tell them what happened.”
Eames’s lips begin to tremble. “They- They’ll put me in the system.”
Arthur feels his jaw clench in sympathetic grief. Of course they will. Eames is an orphan now.
Arthur looks down at his boots. “Do you have any other family? Grandparents? Aunts or uncles?”
Eames shakes his head. “No.”
“Do you have any friends you could stay with?”
Eames’s shoulders begin to heave, as if he’s about to sob or vomit. “W-w-we j-just got here. L-less than a year ago. I don’t... I don’t know a-anyone-” He gulps in a breath, and then he jumps nearly out of his chair when Arthur’s door begins to shake, pounded repeatedly by a heavy fist.
Arthur walks forward carefully, stops next to Eames, places a hand on his shoulder.
They stare at the door as a voice on the other side of it says, “LAPD. Open up.”
Eames looks up at Arthur. Arthur keeps his eyes on the door, doesn’t move.
The fist and the voice come again. “This is the police. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Eames is trembling, but Arthur’s hand on his shoulder is steady, unmoving.
A heavy sigh and retreating footsteps. Eames exhales, looks down at his hands in his lap.
Arthur takes his hand off of Eames’s shoulder, turns and begins to walk toward a doorway in the corner of the room. He stops when he reaches it, turns his head towards Eames but keeps his eyes on the floor. The yellow light from the bathroom at his back illuminates one side of his face, the other half remaining in darkness. “You can stay here tonight if you need to. I’ve got a bed that I don’t sleep in.”
Eames looks up and catches his gaze. Arthur tilts his head in indication, walks through the doorway. Eames follows him.
The room is empty aside from a closet with sliding wooden doors set into the wall and a bare mattress that takes up almost all of the floor space.
Eames stares blankly the mattress for a moment, turns to Arthur and asks him, “Do you have a pillow I could borrow?”
Arthur nods, walks out of the room and back in a few seconds later holding one of the upholstered pillows from the couch in the living room. He hands it to Eames. “Here.”
Eames takes it. “Thanks.”
Arthur stands there for a moment, hands in his pockets. He clears his throat. “Do you need anything else?”
Eames sits down at the end of the bed, shakes his head. “No.” He clutches the pillow to his chest, absently rubs at the scratchy fabric with the tips of his fingers.
Arthur nods. “Okay.” He stands there for a moment, not sure what he’s waiting for.
Eames scoots up the mattress, curls up on his side, lets his head fall over and stares blankly at the wall.
Arthur finds he has to look away from Eames’s face, and the rest of his body follows the movement of his head. He turns on his heels and leaves the room.
A few hours later, Arthur is jarred out of a shallow sleep by the sound of movement in Eames’s room. He pushes himself out of his chair, strides into the small room and halts as soon as he enters, his breath stilling in his lungs.
Eames stands fully clothed by the side of the bed. In front of him, in the center of the mattress are two silver cases. In one of them, his Spectre M-4 lies cradled in black foam. In the other lies the body of his Bizon-2 submachine gun. Its magazine and sound suppressor have been removed from the case and are now curled in Eames’s hands, the pads of his fingers gently stroking the smooth steel.
“What are you doing?” Arthur asks him.
Eames drops the parts onto the mattress, stumbles backwards until his back hits the wall. A vicious tremor starts at his hands and moves down his body until Arthur can see his knees trembling beneath his baggy jeans. “I’m sorry I’m sorry... I- I was cold... I was- was looking for a blanket.”
Arthur has been on the receiving end of crippling fear more times than he can count. Almost all men fear death. This is different. Eames is looking at him and seeing a man, not an omen. Eames isn’t trembling because he’s afraid of death. Eames is afraid of him.
Arthur has to swallow back the urge to vomit.
Eames wets his lips, stutters, “W-why do you have these?”
Arthur tries to think of a way that he can explain his ownership of two submachine guns without frightening Eames further. He can’t. “It’s- They’re for my work.”
“You’re work? W-what do you do?”
Arthur tries to pull the correct words from his mind. “I- I-”
“What? Are you a cop?!” Eames’s voice begins to gain volume, his terror morphing into rage. “Are you FBI? Why the fuck do you have these?!”
“I’m not a cop.” Arthur insists.
“Then what are you?!” Eames screams, as if wondering whether Arthur is even a human.
“I’m- I’m an enforcer.” Arthur finally gets out.
Eames’ eyes narrow a bit. “An enforcer?”
Arthur nods at the floor. “Yeah.”
“You-” Eames cranes his neck forward a bit. “You mean like a hitman?”
“No.” Arthur answers sharply. “Hitmen are independent contractors. They’ll do anyone for the right amount of money. I’m an enforcer. I take orders from my employer. And it’s business. It’s never personal.”
Eames blinks at him. “You kill people for a living?”
Arthur swallows, nods. “Yes.”
Eames pushes away from the wall, puts a hand to his face. “I have to get out of here.”
Arthur has to resist the urge to reach out and grab Eames as he brushes past him. The boy dashes out of the room and the apartment, slamming the door on his way out.
Arthur is still awake when the sun comes up a couple hours later. He’s usually up at this time of day anyway. He likes to watch the light in the apartment shift, listen to the sounds of the city rising. Right now his ears are trained on the hallway outside his apartment. He hears the approach of sneakered feet before the soft knock.
He opens the door to see Eames standing there, eyes and nose swollen and face blotchy, reeking of cigarette smoke. He sniffs, wipes at his face with the sleeve of his hoodie. “Can I come in?”
Arthur opens the door, steps to the side. Eames takes a seat at the kitchen table, lifts the hood off his head and unzips his jacket.
Arthur walks over to the other side of the table. “Do you want a glass of water or something?”
Eames nods. “That would be nice, thank you.”
Arthur pours him a glass of water from the tap, sets it in front of Eames and sits down across the table from him.
Eames looks down at the water and doesn’t drink it. He clasps his hands in front of him on the table, sits up a bit, sets his shoulders back. Arthur’s seen this sort of posture before. This is how men hold themselves when negotiating. Dominik, Arthur’s employer, adopts this position when speaking to the head of another family. It should look odd on one as young as Eames. It doesn’t.
Eames looks down at his hands when he speaks. “Did you get a good look at them?”
It takes Arthur a moment to figure out what he’s talking about. He nods. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“What did they look like?”
“They were the same two men that were here the day before, talking to your dad.”
Eames looks up at Arthur then. “He wasn’t my dad.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No. He was my mum’s boyfriend.” Eames clenches his jaw. “I only wish they’d spared him so I could kill him myself.”
Arthur doesn’t disagree with him.
Eames continues. “Do you know who they were? Those men?”
“I didn’t recognize them, no.” Arthur doesn’t mention that they were cops. He’s not sure why.
Eames looks down at his hands, curled together on the table. “You said you only work for one man.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t do personal hits.”
“No, I don’t.” Arthur knows exactly where he’s going with this.
“How much would it take to change your mind?”
Arthur leans forward, puts his elbows on the table. “Who I take out has nothing to do with my personal preferences, Eames. I’m a subordinate. I do what’s asked of me.”
Eames regards him silently for a few seconds. “Do you know someone that would? Execute a personal hit?”
“No. You can’t pay someone enough to take out a cop; it’s just not done.” Arthur realizes why he didn’t tell Eames that they were cops before. He was waiting for this moment.
The fear returns to cloud Eames’s eyes, the color of ice on stone. “Cops?”
Arthur clears his throat. “Yeah.”
Eames looks back down at his hands. “Why- why would the cops come after my family?”
“I don’t know. You heard them talking. Do you think it had something to do with your d- mom’s boyfriend?”
Eames ignores Arthur’s question. His thumbs pause where they’ve been pressing together over his clenched hands. “Do you think they’ll come after me?”
Arthur wants to reassure him that they won’t, but he’s never been a very good liar.
Eames’s eyebrows draw together, and his lips twitch. He says dispassionately, “They’re going to kill me.”
“Eames-”
“There’s probably someone out there watching this building right now. Once they figure out that I’m still here-”
“Eames, it’s okay. I’m going to find another apartment tomorrow. I can’t stay here anyway with a crime scene right down the hall. You can come with me if you want.”
Eames stares at him for a moment, his grey eyes assessing Arthur’s expression. “Are you sure?”
No, Arthur’s not sure. “Of course.”
It’s obvious that Eames can read the uncertainty in Arthur face, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He looks down at his hands, humbled. “Thank you.”
The next morning at ten, after everyone has gone to work, Arthur packs his guns and his father’s suit into the back seat of his car, a ‘95 Mitsubishi Eclipse with torn upholstery and a back window that doesn’t roll up. Dom gave it to Arthur for his birthday a couple years ago. Arthur only uses it for jobs that are outside the city limits.
“You have a car?” Eames asks him when he sees it. He lets Arthur’s chair slide off his back so that they can hoist it up and tie it to the roof of the car.
Arthur shrugs. “Everyone in LA has a car.”
They drive downtown and into the Jewelry District. Crumbling Art Deco-style apartment buildings and streets with names like Grand and Broadway, just like in a real city. Long windows filled with precious stones and ‘We Buy Gold’ signs on every corner. Aluminum trash cans overflowing with fast food detritus.
The apartment buildings they look into are dirty but safe. Places where the supers shoo drug dealers and addicts off the front stoop but don’t bother to fix the plumbing or exterminate roaches. Places where they don’t make you sign a lease or mind if you pay in cash. Places where the super takes one look at Arthur (an older man) and Eames (an under-aged boy with a bruise on his jaw and fifty-pound bags under his eyes) and say, “Sorry. No vacancies.”
They’re driving down Hill Street, in search of another place after being turned away twice, and Eames says, “Stop at this pharmacy up here.”
Arthur parks next to the curb in front of a CVS.
Eames holds his palm out and asks, with the certainty of someone who knows that the answer is going to be in the affirmative, “Could I borrow twenty bucks?”
Arthur’s eyebrows draw together. “Borrow? You mean you’re planning on paying me back somehow?”
Eames flashes him a crooked grin. “Of course.”
Arthur remains still and silent.
“C’mon, mate, I just need to buy some cigs. You already have a petulant teenager on your hands. You don’t want to deal with a petulant teenager going through nicotine withdrawal.”
He has a point. Arthur sighs, digs a twenty out of his back pocket.
“Cheers, mate.”
Eames comes back fifteen minutes later with fifty cents in change, two packs of cigarettes, a cheap pair of aviators and a pack of white cotton v-neck undershirts.
He drops the change in Arthur’s hand and gets to work. He strips off the purple shirt he’s been wearing since yesterday and pulls one of the undershirts on, runs his fingers through his hair until it’s artfully mussed and dons the aviators.
“What are you doing?” Arthur asks him, frozen in place, his hand still up and cupping the change.
“Upping our chances.”
“I don’t understand.”
Eames leans his elbow out the window, rests his head in his hand and throws a pleased smile at Arthur. “You will.”
Eames doesn’t explain himself further, and they walk into the next apartment building in the same fashion they did the first two: Arthur in front, Eames trailing behind.
Arthur walks up to the front desk where a middle-aged woman with bleached blond hair sits chewing her nails and reading a paperback copy of Beauty’s Release. She puts the book face down on the desk when she sees him, leaving it splayed open to the page she’s reading. “How can I help you?” she asks him impassively.
Arthur takes deep breath. “Yes. We’re looking for temporary accommodations. Something furnished. One bedroom.”
Her gaze moves over Arthur’s shoulder to where he knows Eames is standing. Arthur holds his breath.
Behind him, a young voice says in a bland southern California accent, “Mom says you promised you’d take me to Rodeo. Is that true?”
The woman sitting in front of Arthur raises an eyebrow at him. The look of consternation that passes over Arthur’s face is not faked. He turns his head slowly to look behind him.
Eames is leaning dramatically back against the wall, the sole of one sneakered foot flat against it like some under-aged James Dean. The white cotton shirt is about one size too tight on him, clinging to the burgeoning muscles on his chest and biceps. His lips are pushed out in a small pout, and he’s staring down at his phone, his thumbs flying rapidly over the buttons.
When Arthur goes to speak, he realizes that his mouth is hanging open. He clears his throat. “Excuse me?”
Eames looks up at Arthur, rolls his eyes. “I mean, I know we don’t have enough money to go shopping on Rodeo. But I at least want a picture of me outside Armani. My friends WOULD. SHIT.”
Arthur blinks at him, stunned. He turns back around to look at the concierge, a silent plea in his eyes.
“Lemme guess,” she says, unimpressed, “You’re his agent.”
Behind him, Eames scoffs. “He wishes. He’s my stepfather. My mom won’t be here until Monday. She’s the one with the money. So until she shows up, we have to stay in whatever crack house he can afford.”
The concierge looks between them for a couple beats, and the she sighs and says to Arthur, “I have something on the ninth floor. The elevator’s broken so you’ll have to use the stairs. It’s non-smoking. Fifteen bucks a day.”
Arthur nods slowly, still shell-shocked. “Okay.”
“I need a photo ID.”
Arthur comes to enough to dig the fake license Dom made for him out of his back pocket. The concierge takes it and goes into the back room.
Once she’s gone, Arthur turns around again to look at Eames.
The boy looks away from his phone and up at Arthur through long eyelashes. His lips quirk in a small smile, shy but proud.
Arthur feels his own lips stretch across his face, feels the creases at the corners of his lips deepen. He can tell by Eames’s reaction to his expression that he’s smiling.
Arthur will learn to miss Eames’s smile in the coming days. He gives Eames various chores to do and errands to run in order to keep him from going mad with boredom, but most days it isn’t enough. Eames is well aware that he is an anomaly in Arthur’s life, and he acts as such.
He spends his days shuffling quietly around the apartment, trying not to get in Arthur’s way, incorporeal as a spectre. Days of silence are punctuated by wrathful outbursts. Eames pounding his fist into the gas range and screaming at it when the pilot light goes out and he can’t find any matches to re-light it. Eames hitting his funny bone on the kitchen counter, the sharp jolt of pain sending him crumbling to the floor, weeping.
Each incident ends with Eames storming out of the apartment, embarrassed. He always returns a couple hours later, eyes swollen and clothes smelling of cigarettes.
Arthur prefers moments like these to the endless hours of silence. Eames curled up on the sofa that he’s using as a bed until they can find him a mattress, staring dead-eyed into the television screen, shoveling Hot Cheetos into his mouth.
One day, a couple weeks after they move in, Eames sits down at the kitchen table where Arthur is cleaning his guns. He watches as Arthur’s long fingers slide gracefully over the steel. Arthur often catches Eames staring at him while he does this, fascinated and entranced by the movement.
After a few beats of silence, Eames speaks, his eyes still fixed on Arthur’s hands, “I can’t keep doing this, Arthur.”
Arthur pauses at his task. “Can’t keep doing what?”
“This. Sitting on my arse all day. It’s driving me fucking bonkers.”
Arthur puts the chamber and the oiled cloth down on the table. “Okay. What do you want to do.”
Eames fidgets in his seat. “Well... I’ve been thinking... I can’t very well go back to school. And I don’t have a legal guardian, so I can’t apply for a job...”
Arthur waits for him to continue.
“So, I was thinking maybe I could... help you.”
“Help me what?”
Eames shrugs, gestures at the parts spread across the table. “You know... help you with this...”
“You want to help me clean my guns?”
“Well, yeah. That and... I dunno, I thought maybe you could teach me.”
Sudden realization descends upon Arthur. “You- you want me to teach you how to kill people?”
“No! No, not that. I couldn’t ask you to do that. I just... I want you to teach me how to fight. How to defend myself. How to take care of myself.”
“Eames-”
“I can’t live like this, Arthur,” Eames is pleading with him now. “I jump at every little sound. I can barely walk to the corner shop without having a full-blown panic attack. Yesterday a police car sped by me, and I nearly shat myself.”
Arthur clasps his hands in front of him on the table in imitation of what he’s seen Dom do so many times and the posture that Eames took on just a couple weeks ago at his kitchen table. He regards the boy silently for a few moments, lets himself get lost in the depth of those grey eyes.
Youth and desperation do not make a good foundation on which to build. But Eames is smart, smarter than a lot of the thugs that call themselves hitmen. And he’s more self-aware than many of the men that work for Dom.
He thinks about the difference between actual power and the illusion of power, thinks that Eames could benefit from the latter just as much as the former.
It’s times like these that Arthur is glad that he’s a subordinate. He’s horrible at making these sort of decisions.
At last he says, “I’ll think about it.”
A ghost of a smile flits across Eames’s lips, and Arthur’s heart beats double at the sight. Eames bows his head slightly. “Thank you, Arthur.”
Author: sneaqui
Team: Angst
Prompts: Innocence, Home
Word Count: 3600
Rating: R
Warnings: mentions of murder, (Warnings for future parts: Main character death, sexual situations involving a minor)
Notes: Sorry, guys! This story is going to be a little longer than I originally anticipated. This should come as a surprise to no one who has ever read my WIPs... Next part will be posted on Monday for the match but the last one or two parts will be posted on my journal and cross-posted to the comms.
This part is unbetaed.
Part I // Part II
Arthur wipes the Gatorade from the floor with frayed dishtowel, picks up Eames’s plastic Walgreen’s bag to clean it off too.
“Bin it.”
Arthur looks up at Eames. He’s seated at the kitchen table, staring down at its Formica top, arms lying limply in his lap.
Arthur looks down at the bag, wonders aloud, “What do you mean ‘bin it’?”
Eames shrugs, says in a small voice, “Band-Aid’s not gonna help her now, is it?”
Arthur wets his lips, tries again, “No, I mean- ‘bin it’... What does it mean?”
Eames whips his head around to hiss at Arthur, “It means put it in the garbage! Throw it away! Get it the fuck out of my sight!”
“Okay. Okay. Alright.” Arthur puts his hands up, palms out, placating. He takes the bag into the bathroom, tosses the plastic and, after regarding the brand-new first aid supplies in his hand, quietly places them in the cabinet behind the mirror.
At some point, the sirens come. Neighbors who hid in their apartments while the sound of gunshots rang out through the corridors walk out into the hallway, shake their heads and say, “Thirteen-years-old. That’s fucked up, man.”
The metallic clatter of stretchers being wheeled out of the elevator. The static and the droning electronic voices on the police radios.
Eames watches the door, as if trying to see the sounds on the other side of it.
Arthur leans back against the kitchen counter, the Beretta that’s still tucked into his trousers pressing into his spine. He puts his hands in his pockets, clears his throat. “Do you want to talk to them?”
Eames looks up, seemingly surprised to find another person in the room. “What?”
“The police. Do you want to talk to them?”
Eames’s features slacken. “Do I have to?”
“I just thought maybe you’d want to. Tell them what happened.”
Eames’s lips begin to tremble. “They- They’ll put me in the system.”
Arthur feels his jaw clench in sympathetic grief. Of course they will. Eames is an orphan now.
Arthur looks down at his boots. “Do you have any other family? Grandparents? Aunts or uncles?”
Eames shakes his head. “No.”
“Do you have any friends you could stay with?”
Eames’s shoulders begin to heave, as if he’s about to sob or vomit. “W-w-we j-just got here. L-less than a year ago. I don’t... I don’t know a-anyone-” He gulps in a breath, and then he jumps nearly out of his chair when Arthur’s door begins to shake, pounded repeatedly by a heavy fist.
Arthur walks forward carefully, stops next to Eames, places a hand on his shoulder.
They stare at the door as a voice on the other side of it says, “LAPD. Open up.”
Eames looks up at Arthur. Arthur keeps his eyes on the door, doesn’t move.
The fist and the voice come again. “This is the police. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Eames is trembling, but Arthur’s hand on his shoulder is steady, unmoving.
A heavy sigh and retreating footsteps. Eames exhales, looks down at his hands in his lap.
Arthur takes his hand off of Eames’s shoulder, turns and begins to walk toward a doorway in the corner of the room. He stops when he reaches it, turns his head towards Eames but keeps his eyes on the floor. The yellow light from the bathroom at his back illuminates one side of his face, the other half remaining in darkness. “You can stay here tonight if you need to. I’ve got a bed that I don’t sleep in.”
Eames looks up and catches his gaze. Arthur tilts his head in indication, walks through the doorway. Eames follows him.
The room is empty aside from a closet with sliding wooden doors set into the wall and a bare mattress that takes up almost all of the floor space.
Eames stares blankly the mattress for a moment, turns to Arthur and asks him, “Do you have a pillow I could borrow?”
Arthur nods, walks out of the room and back in a few seconds later holding one of the upholstered pillows from the couch in the living room. He hands it to Eames. “Here.”
Eames takes it. “Thanks.”
Arthur stands there for a moment, hands in his pockets. He clears his throat. “Do you need anything else?”
Eames sits down at the end of the bed, shakes his head. “No.” He clutches the pillow to his chest, absently rubs at the scratchy fabric with the tips of his fingers.
Arthur nods. “Okay.” He stands there for a moment, not sure what he’s waiting for.
Eames scoots up the mattress, curls up on his side, lets his head fall over and stares blankly at the wall.
Arthur finds he has to look away from Eames’s face, and the rest of his body follows the movement of his head. He turns on his heels and leaves the room.
A few hours later, Arthur is jarred out of a shallow sleep by the sound of movement in Eames’s room. He pushes himself out of his chair, strides into the small room and halts as soon as he enters, his breath stilling in his lungs.
Eames stands fully clothed by the side of the bed. In front of him, in the center of the mattress are two silver cases. In one of them, his Spectre M-4 lies cradled in black foam. In the other lies the body of his Bizon-2 submachine gun. Its magazine and sound suppressor have been removed from the case and are now curled in Eames’s hands, the pads of his fingers gently stroking the smooth steel.
“What are you doing?” Arthur asks him.
Eames drops the parts onto the mattress, stumbles backwards until his back hits the wall. A vicious tremor starts at his hands and moves down his body until Arthur can see his knees trembling beneath his baggy jeans. “I’m sorry I’m sorry... I- I was cold... I was- was looking for a blanket.”
Arthur has been on the receiving end of crippling fear more times than he can count. Almost all men fear death. This is different. Eames is looking at him and seeing a man, not an omen. Eames isn’t trembling because he’s afraid of death. Eames is afraid of him.
Arthur has to swallow back the urge to vomit.
Eames wets his lips, stutters, “W-why do you have these?”
Arthur tries to think of a way that he can explain his ownership of two submachine guns without frightening Eames further. He can’t. “It’s- They’re for my work.”
“You’re work? W-what do you do?”
Arthur tries to pull the correct words from his mind. “I- I-”
“What? Are you a cop?!” Eames’s voice begins to gain volume, his terror morphing into rage. “Are you FBI? Why the fuck do you have these?!”
“I’m not a cop.” Arthur insists.
“Then what are you?!” Eames screams, as if wondering whether Arthur is even a human.
“I’m- I’m an enforcer.” Arthur finally gets out.
Eames’ eyes narrow a bit. “An enforcer?”
Arthur nods at the floor. “Yeah.”
“You-” Eames cranes his neck forward a bit. “You mean like a hitman?”
“No.” Arthur answers sharply. “Hitmen are independent contractors. They’ll do anyone for the right amount of money. I’m an enforcer. I take orders from my employer. And it’s business. It’s never personal.”
Eames blinks at him. “You kill people for a living?”
Arthur swallows, nods. “Yes.”
Eames pushes away from the wall, puts a hand to his face. “I have to get out of here.”
Arthur has to resist the urge to reach out and grab Eames as he brushes past him. The boy dashes out of the room and the apartment, slamming the door on his way out.
Arthur is still awake when the sun comes up a couple hours later. He’s usually up at this time of day anyway. He likes to watch the light in the apartment shift, listen to the sounds of the city rising. Right now his ears are trained on the hallway outside his apartment. He hears the approach of sneakered feet before the soft knock.
He opens the door to see Eames standing there, eyes and nose swollen and face blotchy, reeking of cigarette smoke. He sniffs, wipes at his face with the sleeve of his hoodie. “Can I come in?”
Arthur opens the door, steps to the side. Eames takes a seat at the kitchen table, lifts the hood off his head and unzips his jacket.
Arthur walks over to the other side of the table. “Do you want a glass of water or something?”
Eames nods. “That would be nice, thank you.”
Arthur pours him a glass of water from the tap, sets it in front of Eames and sits down across the table from him.
Eames looks down at the water and doesn’t drink it. He clasps his hands in front of him on the table, sits up a bit, sets his shoulders back. Arthur’s seen this sort of posture before. This is how men hold themselves when negotiating. Dominik, Arthur’s employer, adopts this position when speaking to the head of another family. It should look odd on one as young as Eames. It doesn’t.
Eames looks down at his hands when he speaks. “Did you get a good look at them?”
It takes Arthur a moment to figure out what he’s talking about. He nods. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“What did they look like?”
“They were the same two men that were here the day before, talking to your dad.”
Eames looks up at Arthur then. “He wasn’t my dad.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No. He was my mum’s boyfriend.” Eames clenches his jaw. “I only wish they’d spared him so I could kill him myself.”
Arthur doesn’t disagree with him.
Eames continues. “Do you know who they were? Those men?”
“I didn’t recognize them, no.” Arthur doesn’t mention that they were cops. He’s not sure why.
Eames looks down at his hands, curled together on the table. “You said you only work for one man.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t do personal hits.”
“No, I don’t.” Arthur knows exactly where he’s going with this.
“How much would it take to change your mind?”
Arthur leans forward, puts his elbows on the table. “Who I take out has nothing to do with my personal preferences, Eames. I’m a subordinate. I do what’s asked of me.”
Eames regards him silently for a few seconds. “Do you know someone that would? Execute a personal hit?”
“No. You can’t pay someone enough to take out a cop; it’s just not done.” Arthur realizes why he didn’t tell Eames that they were cops before. He was waiting for this moment.
The fear returns to cloud Eames’s eyes, the color of ice on stone. “Cops?”
Arthur clears his throat. “Yeah.”
Eames looks back down at his hands. “Why- why would the cops come after my family?”
“I don’t know. You heard them talking. Do you think it had something to do with your d- mom’s boyfriend?”
Eames ignores Arthur’s question. His thumbs pause where they’ve been pressing together over his clenched hands. “Do you think they’ll come after me?”
Arthur wants to reassure him that they won’t, but he’s never been a very good liar.
Eames’s eyebrows draw together, and his lips twitch. He says dispassionately, “They’re going to kill me.”
“Eames-”
“There’s probably someone out there watching this building right now. Once they figure out that I’m still here-”
“Eames, it’s okay. I’m going to find another apartment tomorrow. I can’t stay here anyway with a crime scene right down the hall. You can come with me if you want.”
Eames stares at him for a moment, his grey eyes assessing Arthur’s expression. “Are you sure?”
No, Arthur’s not sure. “Of course.”
It’s obvious that Eames can read the uncertainty in Arthur face, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He looks down at his hands, humbled. “Thank you.”
The next morning at ten, after everyone has gone to work, Arthur packs his guns and his father’s suit into the back seat of his car, a ‘95 Mitsubishi Eclipse with torn upholstery and a back window that doesn’t roll up. Dom gave it to Arthur for his birthday a couple years ago. Arthur only uses it for jobs that are outside the city limits.
“You have a car?” Eames asks him when he sees it. He lets Arthur’s chair slide off his back so that they can hoist it up and tie it to the roof of the car.
Arthur shrugs. “Everyone in LA has a car.”
They drive downtown and into the Jewelry District. Crumbling Art Deco-style apartment buildings and streets with names like Grand and Broadway, just like in a real city. Long windows filled with precious stones and ‘We Buy Gold’ signs on every corner. Aluminum trash cans overflowing with fast food detritus.
The apartment buildings they look into are dirty but safe. Places where the supers shoo drug dealers and addicts off the front stoop but don’t bother to fix the plumbing or exterminate roaches. Places where they don’t make you sign a lease or mind if you pay in cash. Places where the super takes one look at Arthur (an older man) and Eames (an under-aged boy with a bruise on his jaw and fifty-pound bags under his eyes) and say, “Sorry. No vacancies.”
They’re driving down Hill Street, in search of another place after being turned away twice, and Eames says, “Stop at this pharmacy up here.”
Arthur parks next to the curb in front of a CVS.
Eames holds his palm out and asks, with the certainty of someone who knows that the answer is going to be in the affirmative, “Could I borrow twenty bucks?”
Arthur’s eyebrows draw together. “Borrow? You mean you’re planning on paying me back somehow?”
Eames flashes him a crooked grin. “Of course.”
Arthur remains still and silent.
“C’mon, mate, I just need to buy some cigs. You already have a petulant teenager on your hands. You don’t want to deal with a petulant teenager going through nicotine withdrawal.”
He has a point. Arthur sighs, digs a twenty out of his back pocket.
“Cheers, mate.”
Eames comes back fifteen minutes later with fifty cents in change, two packs of cigarettes, a cheap pair of aviators and a pack of white cotton v-neck undershirts.
He drops the change in Arthur’s hand and gets to work. He strips off the purple shirt he’s been wearing since yesterday and pulls one of the undershirts on, runs his fingers through his hair until it’s artfully mussed and dons the aviators.
“What are you doing?” Arthur asks him, frozen in place, his hand still up and cupping the change.
“Upping our chances.”
“I don’t understand.”
Eames leans his elbow out the window, rests his head in his hand and throws a pleased smile at Arthur. “You will.”
Eames doesn’t explain himself further, and they walk into the next apartment building in the same fashion they did the first two: Arthur in front, Eames trailing behind.
Arthur walks up to the front desk where a middle-aged woman with bleached blond hair sits chewing her nails and reading a paperback copy of Beauty’s Release. She puts the book face down on the desk when she sees him, leaving it splayed open to the page she’s reading. “How can I help you?” she asks him impassively.
Arthur takes deep breath. “Yes. We’re looking for temporary accommodations. Something furnished. One bedroom.”
Her gaze moves over Arthur’s shoulder to where he knows Eames is standing. Arthur holds his breath.
Behind him, a young voice says in a bland southern California accent, “Mom says you promised you’d take me to Rodeo. Is that true?”
The woman sitting in front of Arthur raises an eyebrow at him. The look of consternation that passes over Arthur’s face is not faked. He turns his head slowly to look behind him.
Eames is leaning dramatically back against the wall, the sole of one sneakered foot flat against it like some under-aged James Dean. The white cotton shirt is about one size too tight on him, clinging to the burgeoning muscles on his chest and biceps. His lips are pushed out in a small pout, and he’s staring down at his phone, his thumbs flying rapidly over the buttons.
When Arthur goes to speak, he realizes that his mouth is hanging open. He clears his throat. “Excuse me?”
Eames looks up at Arthur, rolls his eyes. “I mean, I know we don’t have enough money to go shopping on Rodeo. But I at least want a picture of me outside Armani. My friends WOULD. SHIT.”
Arthur blinks at him, stunned. He turns back around to look at the concierge, a silent plea in his eyes.
“Lemme guess,” she says, unimpressed, “You’re his agent.”
Behind him, Eames scoffs. “He wishes. He’s my stepfather. My mom won’t be here until Monday. She’s the one with the money. So until she shows up, we have to stay in whatever crack house he can afford.”
The concierge looks between them for a couple beats, and the she sighs and says to Arthur, “I have something on the ninth floor. The elevator’s broken so you’ll have to use the stairs. It’s non-smoking. Fifteen bucks a day.”
Arthur nods slowly, still shell-shocked. “Okay.”
“I need a photo ID.”
Arthur comes to enough to dig the fake license Dom made for him out of his back pocket. The concierge takes it and goes into the back room.
Once she’s gone, Arthur turns around again to look at Eames.
The boy looks away from his phone and up at Arthur through long eyelashes. His lips quirk in a small smile, shy but proud.
Arthur feels his own lips stretch across his face, feels the creases at the corners of his lips deepen. He can tell by Eames’s reaction to his expression that he’s smiling.
Arthur will learn to miss Eames’s smile in the coming days. He gives Eames various chores to do and errands to run in order to keep him from going mad with boredom, but most days it isn’t enough. Eames is well aware that he is an anomaly in Arthur’s life, and he acts as such.
He spends his days shuffling quietly around the apartment, trying not to get in Arthur’s way, incorporeal as a spectre. Days of silence are punctuated by wrathful outbursts. Eames pounding his fist into the gas range and screaming at it when the pilot light goes out and he can’t find any matches to re-light it. Eames hitting his funny bone on the kitchen counter, the sharp jolt of pain sending him crumbling to the floor, weeping.
Each incident ends with Eames storming out of the apartment, embarrassed. He always returns a couple hours later, eyes swollen and clothes smelling of cigarettes.
Arthur prefers moments like these to the endless hours of silence. Eames curled up on the sofa that he’s using as a bed until they can find him a mattress, staring dead-eyed into the television screen, shoveling Hot Cheetos into his mouth.
One day, a couple weeks after they move in, Eames sits down at the kitchen table where Arthur is cleaning his guns. He watches as Arthur’s long fingers slide gracefully over the steel. Arthur often catches Eames staring at him while he does this, fascinated and entranced by the movement.
After a few beats of silence, Eames speaks, his eyes still fixed on Arthur’s hands, “I can’t keep doing this, Arthur.”
Arthur pauses at his task. “Can’t keep doing what?”
“This. Sitting on my arse all day. It’s driving me fucking bonkers.”
Arthur puts the chamber and the oiled cloth down on the table. “Okay. What do you want to do.”
Eames fidgets in his seat. “Well... I’ve been thinking... I can’t very well go back to school. And I don’t have a legal guardian, so I can’t apply for a job...”
Arthur waits for him to continue.
“So, I was thinking maybe I could... help you.”
“Help me what?”
Eames shrugs, gestures at the parts spread across the table. “You know... help you with this...”
“You want to help me clean my guns?”
“Well, yeah. That and... I dunno, I thought maybe you could teach me.”
Sudden realization descends upon Arthur. “You- you want me to teach you how to kill people?”
“No! No, not that. I couldn’t ask you to do that. I just... I want you to teach me how to fight. How to defend myself. How to take care of myself.”
“Eames-”
“I can’t live like this, Arthur,” Eames is pleading with him now. “I jump at every little sound. I can barely walk to the corner shop without having a full-blown panic attack. Yesterday a police car sped by me, and I nearly shat myself.”
Arthur clasps his hands in front of him on the table in imitation of what he’s seen Dom do so many times and the posture that Eames took on just a couple weeks ago at his kitchen table. He regards the boy silently for a few moments, lets himself get lost in the depth of those grey eyes.
Youth and desperation do not make a good foundation on which to build. But Eames is smart, smarter than a lot of the thugs that call themselves hitmen. And he’s more self-aware than many of the men that work for Dom.
He thinks about the difference between actual power and the illusion of power, thinks that Eames could benefit from the latter just as much as the former.
It’s times like these that Arthur is glad that he’s a subordinate. He’s horrible at making these sort of decisions.
At last he says, “I’ll think about it.”
A ghost of a smile flits across Eames’s lips, and Arthur’s heart beats double at the sight. Eames bows his head slightly. “Thank you, Arthur.”