(no subject)
I wrote this fic for Liz, of course, she wouldn't read it though, because she's a huge drama queen.
It fills this prompt.
There's a small xover cameo in the middle of this. If you don't recognize the person, that's fine, just ignore it. That was for Liz.
Thank you to green_postit for the beta.
Edith
Arthur, since his youngest days, has always been attracted to a certain type of unpredictable, chaos-inducing person.
In elementary school, his best friend Bryan fearlessly climbed to the top of the swingsets and play structures only to leap off. This evolved into roofs, which evolved into trees. Eventually, Bryan broke his collarbone toppling off of a ladder doing nothing more exotic than reclaiming a kite that was stuck in the eaves of a neighbor's house.
The template was set for Arthur by then.
He's raced around the world for Dom. He joined the Army for Rick-the Dom before Dom-who Arthur wasn't quite able to save from himself. He learned from that lesson: he had to be more vigilant, never flinch or back down from speaking his mind. But most importantly, when someone starts throwing themselves in the line of fire, the better part of valor is throwing yourself between them and the bullets. Friendship means going in first and taking the heaviest fire.
Arthur's well aware that some people call this codependency. He thinks that label was invented by people who set artificial barriers on love. Love isn't a choice, it's not something you do. Love is a state of being that consumes everything in its wake like paper on fire.
You either love someone or you don't, and if you love them, you only say no until it's obvious you're not going to get your way, then you fully commit to whatever bullshit thing the person is into (whether that be yoga, distance running, video editing, or arms smuggling).
Which is how Arthur ends up with a pet pig.
To be fair, the pig's previous owner was more of a fling than a potential life partner. Just another of the kind of guy Arthur ends up attached to--intense, intelligent, a total flake. Micah was a post-doc fellow in physics--which sounds like a completely staid type of profession, but oh, wrong! Arthur learned that during the prank war in Micah's department that coincided with their accidental cohabitation.
The relationship only lasts through Arthur's post-Fischer job smug euphoria. Oddly, it's not even his fault this time. CERN beckons and Arthur, six weeks into the life he had thought he was supposed to have been having for quite some time, is sitting on the couch he never really liked (but Mal had loved) with a bag of stale salt and vinegar chips (he doesn't like those either) watching indecipherable images flit across a television screen with a small black and white pig nestled against his knee.
Quark snuffles in the nest of afghans Arthur has carefully formed for her. Arthur glances down to see sleepy piglet eyes behind long white eyelashes. "I'm renaming you Edith," he informs her solemnly.
*
Arthur hasn't ever had a pet of his own. He's had plenty of shared-but-not-his pets. He grew up in a pretty normal family-divorced and remarried parents and a stepsister-and with that came his mother's inability to say no to someone abandoning a pet. He knows dogs well and cats tend to not be bothered by him.
His stepsister was a small rodent person and always had a guinea pig or a hamster when they were growing up (all with P-names, he still has no idea what that was about). Most of his partners have had dogs, friends as well-Mal hadn't eaten for weeks when her geriatric Pom, Camille, died between Phillipa and James's births.
Arthur knows fuck all about cohabiting on his own with named bacon. Edith is litter trained, so she doesn't have to be walked, really. She likes to lie in the sunny patches around the apartment, so Arthur installs a few cat beds around in the likeliest spots. He starts receiving pet catalogs out of the blue. He must not be blocking the tracking of his purchases that well, which is a red flag he ignores.
He and Edith share cheese sandwiches in the evening while listening to All Things Considered and reading Chinese bloggers on proxy servers. He discovers she loves to leap on bubblewrap and spends a couple hours one night tossing bubblewrap onto the floor and watching Edith gambol on it. His ribs ache from laughing when she finally tires of the game, indicated by her haughty tossing of the plastic into the air with her snout.
About the time that he thinks that her grunts are actual responses to his queries to her about what to watch on television, he realizes he might be having some kind of nervous breakdown. Edith doesn't seem to mind, if her contented snoring is anything to go by. He's had job offers-he's always got offers-but he's not really feeling any of them.
Since Micah left, Arthur's only really left his apartment to fetch the piggy supplies unavailable from Fresh Direct. That kind of hibernation's not totally unheard for him after a big job. He needs some time to decompress with the Dom situation sorted, and he's got more than enough money in the bank that he's not about to go hungry.
He's too self-aware for that line of thinking to really go anywhere. He's in mourning for Mal finally. His own, private mourning that he can allow now and not feel selfish about. There are no Cobol assassins after them, no Dom to hold together, no jobs to focus on.
"She would have liked you," Arthur says to Edith as he rubs between her eyes. She snorts back, enthusiastic for the petting. He sighs and feels extraordinarily lonely out of the blue. He thinks about calling someone and making up a bullshit excuse for the contact to talk about everything besides what's on his mind.
He's knows he's not going to do that.
This is how he ends up with Edith in a dogpark with a flask in his pocket at 3:24 p.m. on a Tuesday.
How the fuck Eames ends up in the same spot is something of a mystery.
*
Eames is wearing a t-shirt and jeans and has several days' worth of beard. He's not just wearing a t-shirt, he's wearing a faded blue shirt with holes in the collar, threadbare in a way that's hard to fake. Said shirt and his jeans are flecked with paint. His fingernails are stained underneath with more paint and he smells faintly of turpentine when Arthur approaches him.
"What in the fucking hell are you doing here?" Eames puts his cigarette out in a soda can. He's sitting on a bench and looks angry before he smothers it with his bored, disdain face.
Arthur's a little tipsy. "Why are you fucking with me?"
Eames blinks up at him. "We seem to be the cruel victims of coincidence." His tone is dry. Arthur and Eames have a certain level of tension in their relationship that stems from not being very good at reading each other. Arthur is not currently at his best, so he doesn't even attempt to suss whether Eames is putting him on. He just sits down next to him on the bench.
"What're you doing here?" he goes for the direct approach.
"As far as fundamental questions of existence go, that's a classic. Am I simply here to strive to reproduce and pass my genetic material on to another generation, an immortality of sorts? Am I here to complete some destiny set before me by supernatural entities? Am I here for no reason a'tall, just a cosmic crapshoot in which I got lucky?"
Arthur realizes that even with the meticulously researched background details and the minutiae of his CV, he doesn't really know Eames. He knows the collection of competencies he possesses-superlative marksmanship, quick on his feet, brilliant with strategy-but he's never really looked too close to see which bits of him are the sham and which bits are the genuine article. He hasn't ever cared all that much.
"You're so full of shit," Arthur intones. He palms his flask and pulls a swallow. Eames is watching him in the thin light of early afternoon. He has freckles his on his cheeks and his beard burns toward red in the sunlight. Arthur offers the flask over.
"Arthur, I know we're hardly intimate friends, but wouldn't it behoove you to ascertain whether I'm here to harm you before you get blotto?" He takes the flask and drains half of it in one long drink.
"Why're you here?" Arthur asks again. He turns to watch Edith frolicking with a miniature labradoodle and a couple of pugs. They’re playing some sort of leap up, skitter away game. Arthur can hear Edith's delighted squeals over the cacophony of barking.
"I like the light here." Eames pulls a stub of pencil out from behind his ear and a sketchbook out of the messenger bag at his feet. "Which of them is yours?" He doesn't ask if one of the animals is Arthur's.
"The pig."
"I feel like there's something of a story there," Eames's tone is light, but there's no laughter there, and when Arthur turns to look at him he's watching back.
*
Arthur feels strange about tethering Edith to a table so Eames and he can share a drink on the sidewalk. He decides instead, impulsively, to allow Eames to see where he lives so that Edith can be left in the comfort of her own home.
Eames patters out a color commentary as they amble from Tompkins Square Park to Arthur's building. "That fellow had better get used to being single soon if he keeps up like that," to a very young man overtly flirting with another woman as his girlfriend glares daggers. "Fucking cyclists," directed loudly at the cyclist who nearly topples them over in a crosswalk. "I think your pig is giving me a gimlet eye, what did you tell him about me? " said in a suspicious tone directly to Edith where she's nestled against Arthur's back in the carrier.
"She. Her name's Edith." Arthur's just loose enough to not feel self-conscious about being a tad defensive over the honor of his pig.
"Of course it is. Hello, Edith, charmed. Your bristles are quite fetching." He reaches out to let Edith smell his fingers, like a dog. She snuffles in her inscrutable porcine fashion. "I'm clutching my totem right now, just so we're all above board." Eames's right hand is stuffed in his front pocket.
"Are you wearing sandals?" Arthur doesn't know how he didn't notice that immediately. He reaches in his own pocket for his die as he stares at Eames's naked toes.
"You didn't notice the whole bohemian artiste ensemble, dear?"
They've stopped on the sidewalk in front of Arthur's building. Arthur hesitates. "Is this you, or is this a job?" he's not even sure why he cares. Maybe part of his being at loose ends is becoming the kind of person who wants to delineate genuineness from artifice for more than professional reasons.
Eames plucks at his bottom lip with his stained fingers. "I'm on holiday at the mo, Arthur, no job. Why would I bother so close in?"
Indeed, why would they bother?
He turns and walks up the front steps.
*
Arthur's had this apartment for years. It's more or less his permanent home. He isn't so arrogant as to try to hide where he lives from Interested Parties-File 17, the branch of the CIA that supposedly tracks dreamsharing, for instance. Those guys are a fucking joke, and he's not concerned. He was a little less sanguine about his old Pentagon bosses subtly letting him know they keep an eye on him, but he sticks mostly to corporate work so they leave him alone for the time being (Dom's the one they're worried about anyway, for good reason).
Eames is probably the kind of attention Arthur doesn't want in his professionally managed life, but fuck if he cares at the moment. He tosses his keys into the Delft bluewear bowl on the halltree and carefully peels Edith's sling off his back. He lets her loose and she sprints into the kitchen to root around in her food bowl.
"I'm surprised you don't dress her in booties." Eames scratches his beard and raises his eyebrows. "Because of the floor."
Arthur looks down at the floor. "Oh, it's really authentic looking laminate." Eames is watching him with a half smile; one of his eyebrows wiggles. "Not because of Edith. I had an incident a few years ago. Blood seeps into the cracks in wood and you can't get it out. Laminate just wipes clean." The incident had been Dare, his army buddy, tripping and falling on a boning knife because he was so tweaked out on Redbull, but Arthur can sound dangerous and mysterious if he wants.
"Cut yourself shaving, is it?" Eames, apparently, finds mystery amusing.
"Do you want a drink?" Arthur rolls his eyes in what he imagines to be a threatening way. Eames continues to smile.
"What's it like to be a free man?" Eames trails behind Arthur, eyes skimming the open brickwork, the almost floor to ceiling windows letting in the grey varnished New York sunshine. "I don't think I've ever seen you outside of your element as someone's personal fireman."
That's true. Their sort don't socialize so much as form familial units or remain wary of each other.
There's not a lot of in between.
Arthur's kitchen is a bit of Provincial France in the middle of the Lower East Side. When he bought the place Mal had been in an interior decorating phase, nesting in his space because she and Dom had been in an Epic Battle over which way the toilet paper oriented or if teal was blue or green. His countertops are bright blue tile and the backsplash is a riot of red/blue/yellow/white tile. The reclaimed cabinet doors are sanded down and painted bright, cherry red.
Everything is alive and ready to tell you about it.
Arthur's used to the plate slots and the deep ceramic sink, so he's surprised by Eames's whistle as he slaps his palm flat on his stomach. "I'm reordering my worldview. If you have a tagine I might faint."
"Of course I do, you know how enthusiastic gay men get at the holidays. I also have monogrammed towels." He's used those to mop up the worst sorts of accidents.
Edith is flopped in her kitchen bed, head peaking over the side of the memoryfoam bunting. She avidly watches as Arthur opens the liquor cabinet-literally a cabinet someone else would use for dishes or spices-but filled with booze.
"Can I be so bold as to offer to make the cocktails?" Eames slinks up behind him and just plucks the cocktail shaker off the shelf.
"Sure, why not." Arthur bends down to scratch behind Edith's ear. He feels Eames's eyes on him, but he doesn't bother to worry if he's being mocked.
The kitchen's open format and faces tall windows with a brown leather couch beneath. Arthur arranges himself on the couch and pats the cushion next to him. Tiny hooves immediately skitter over the floor. He has to reach down to boost her up, but Edith settles herself to her liking, head on Arthur's knee.
"What're you doing in New York?" Arthur isn't sure if this is going to be an interrogation or a conversation or something in between.
"Painting, that much should be obvious, even to you." The barb doesn't sound cruel so much as comfortable. Eames looks over his shoulder. "You do have hobbies, don't you?"
Arthur supposed he does-or did-at one point.
Eames hands him a tumbler full of an amber cocktail. It smells spicy. Arthur doesn't bother to ask what it is. A Rusty Nail, apparently.
"What do you do when you're in the city, when you're not working?" Eames sits on the other end of the couch, he's shed his sandals and angles one foot under his thigh so he can lean his elbow on the back of the couch.
Arthur shrugs one shoulder. Edith hooves at him slightly. "Listen to live music, sometimes go to art shows. I used to like the flower market."
"Have you done any of those things of late?" Eames's voice is neutral, the unjudgmental evenness of a therapist.
"Why do you care?" The words are sort of a placeholder. He doesn't really feel like explaining himself, but he's also not really aggro.
"I'd be pretty shit at my job if I couldn't recognize the listlessness of depression, yeah? " The ice rattles in his glass. "Is this your usual, post-job?"
"No," Arthur answers honestly. His hand falls on Edith's back.
Eames hums in the back of his throat. "I guess there's nothing for it, we'll have to have a fling to take your mind off the bereavement."
Arthur laughs at that, loud enough to send Edith scuttling across the floor to throw herself under a blanket in her bed in the living room.
Somehow this lands him in Brooklyn.
*
Gisele is a concept artist.
Arthur's only slightly buzzed now. A steady application of kebabs and rice smothered the booze into submission so he can make smalltalk without sneering or bolting for the door.
"Yes, I suppose the pervasive nature of irony does destroy the innocence of artistic expression." Arthur is only slightly mollified to be trapped in this situation by the fact that he could kill everyone in the room utilizing the art installation itself. He gazes at the science fair volcanoes strewn around the room, their livid red-bulbed light casting the room in a sinister tilt.
Arthur smells tobacco and feels fingertips on the small of his back almost instantaneously. "May I borrow this gentlemen?" Eames is spinning Arthur away from Gisele's glare before she can protest.
"If this is your best attempt to cheer me up, I'd hate to see you trying to ruin my day." Arthur shrugs Eames off, but it's useless unless he wants to do nerve damage because Eames just flows right back in with his arm around Arthur's waist and head turned in a conspiratorial manner up slightly to whisper in Arthur's ear.
"Not enjoying the local color?" His laughter ruffles the fine hairs above Arthur's ear. Arthur wonders what the fuck he's gotten himself into and why he doesn't just get on a train and go home. No, ok, he tries to wonder that but he knows exactly why. This is the pattern. Eames is just mercurial enough to hit Arthur's buttons. "We're just here to meet Rory."
Rory turns out to be a large, red-haired guy with a Liverpool accent that Eames is very mysterious about. Rory produces a bottle of schnapps. He's just back from Hungary, you see.
"Oh, slivovitz. This should be an interesting evening." Arthur feels the alcohol burn off the ten top layers of mucus membrane as it goes down. Eames is watching him, his eyelashes shielding his eyes as the three of them stand under a streetlight waiting for the crosswalk sign to change.
"Don't land me in the clink tonight, you and your boy here," Rory says out of the blue. Their relationship resolves in Arthur's mind, Rory is a friend. Eames is bringing Arthur into his real life.
"This one's safe as houses, mate, no worries," Eames's accent has slithered sideways in the last hour. This is not the Eames of boardrooms and business meetings, not even the Eames that pokes fun at Arthur's rigid scheduling and grooming. This could be the real person. Probably not, though.
"Pull the other one, you twat, he's got the look of a bare knuckles fighter. " Rory cuts his eyes at Arthur, he's smiling what appears good-naturedly as he literally ribs his elbow into Eames's side. "Maybe we can take a tour 'round that way later."
"Fuck off." Eames fake punches at Rory's face. "Not tonight. Maybe another night."
Illegal boxing matches are hardly surprising when it comes to Eames. "I'm not letting you pimp me out to make twenty bucks on a thrown fight." Arthur rolls his eyes.
Rory and Eames both laugh uproariously. "You," Rory points at Arthur. "I like. Stand up for yourself or you'll wake up one morning handcuffed to a bed wearing someone else's pants backwards covered in sesame seeds with a chicken pecking at your balls."
This seems strangely specific to be a randomly strung together scenario. Arthur cracks a smile and raises an eyebrow at Eames.
"Arthur has a pet pig," Eames informs Rory pointing at Arthur with his thumb.
"I guess you know what you're in for then," Rory says as they push in the backdoor of what is apparently a jazz club.
The jazz club Rory owns.
The jazz club and illegal gambling den that Rory owns.
*
Arthur's first order of business is to excuse himself so he can roll his die about 36 times in a row in the blissful privacy of the bathroom. Either someone's cracked his totem or this is real. He's ambivalent about picking a scenario he prefers. He thinks he might be enjoying himself. He can't remember the last time he did something just for the fuck of it.
Eames is waiting on the other side of the bathroom door, somehow managing to blend into the flocked wallpaper and dark woodwork. His tattoos and casual slouch make him look dangerous in the exact sort of way that Arthur's never been able to pull off. He's always had to be the wild card, the one everyone expects to pick off first because of his baby face and slight build. People cross the street to avoid Eames, they ask Arthur to watch their toddler while they futz with the ATM.
Eames smiles with one side of his mouth and bobs his chin towards him. "Satisfied?"
"Hardly." Arthur replies without thinking. Eames's laughter is the wild cackle Arthur's not heard much of before.
"Normally I'd say something like 'I can certainly help you with that' or the like, but I'll spare us both." He straightens and pulls himself away from the wall as he cracks his neck. Eames is always just so, transparently professional and reserved. This isn't that guy, which adds to the surreal ambiance. "Do you play pool?"
"I can play pool, I wouldn't say I'm a pool player." Arthur's lowered his voice to match the soft tone Eames has taken. They can walk side by side down the corridor, but just, their arms brush from shoulder to elbow.
"Ah." Eames produces a toothpick from his back pocket. "Maybe you're not much of a gambler?"
Which is utterly ridiculous. They're all addicted to adrenaline, control freaks, compulsive. "Have you met someone in our line of work who doesn't gamble when off the job?"
Eames laughs again, this time a quiet rumble. "What's your game then?"
"You're not going to impress me by already knowing?" They've paused in front of a heavy wooden door with a keypad lock. Eames watches him with his usual neutral expression for a couple of long seconds that feel suddenly charged. Arthur feels like there's some kind of threat lingering in the air.
"Don't be a tit, let the mask crack. We're just mates. This is a good time, not a fucking challenge."
"Huh. Because I think you almost hit me a minute ago."
Eames types a code into the pad. He smiles over his shoulder. "Only a friendly punch up, though."
*
This is how Arthur is introduced to Eames's secret life as the least dodgey person in a room.
In one corner is a clutch of Russians discussing dogfighting simultaneously with meth trafficking over a game of dice. At the bar is someone Arthur does his best not to recognize from Haag war criminal bulletins. The atmosphere is very speak-easy with dim lighting, like an old jazz photograph where the only filter needed for the lens was the cigarette smoke.
About that, everyone appears to be smoking. Inside. "Were we teleported to Beijing?" he asks Eames as he pulls out a chair to settle himself at the already occupied table. Their new companion greets them in Mandarin. Eames barks out a laugh as Arthur scrutinizes a very familiar face.
The guy sticks his hand out, a wide smile making him looks a bit manic. Before he can open his mouth Arthur says "I know who you are."
"Well, of course you do," creases appear at the corners of blue eyes as he laughs.
"I didn't realize you were real," Arthur looks at Eames who's smiling back with one eyebrow lifted. Arthur has seen this particular individual in Eames's dreams for years. Once he was an organ grinder with a dancing monkey inexplicably parked on a busy street corner in Dallas; another time, in a gorilla suit and cowboy hat in an elevator in an otherwise buttoned-down business complex; one very memorable time, eating chalk as part of a background scene in a playground. The chalk was pastel and his teeth were streaked with blue and pink.
"I am, indeed, real," the guy intones solemnly as the band tunes up on the raised dais across the room.
"What're you drinking, Mr. Collins?" Eames asks, pitching his voice over the swell of dixieland fusion.
"Rumple Minz," is the reply.
Arthur hasn't drank flavored schnapps since he was about nineteen.
They're in a room full of Interpol's Most Wanted, Eames appears to be on first name basis with everyone, and that implausible Misha Collins projection is real.
Arthur doesn't realize this is just the beginning of his evening.
*
A list of things Arthur learns in the next hour or so:
Eames can not only count cards while smoking a joint and downing shots, he can do so to the tune of several K and laugh when he (purposefully) blows a hand.
Russian mobsters get sentimental when they hear Afro-American spirituals.
Rumple Minze is basically liquefied toothpaste with cocaine in it.
He's not nearly as competitive when sedated on liquid toothpaste.
*
He doesn't remember agreeing to go to Brighton Beach.
He's lost his shoes and socks and several buttons off his shirt. Eames has a purpling fist mark on his left cheek and a new best friend named Ivan. The pierogis are decent and help to stop the homemade aquavit from sloshing around too much in his stomach.
He's the level of drunk where he thinks there's a good chance he won't remember any of this the next day. So he says, "I'm enjoying myself" to Eames, because why the fuck not?
Eames finishes chewing and smiles, his eyes dipping closed for a half second, eyelashes sweeping his cheeks fondly, Arthur thinks. "My first indication that this might be the case was when you allowed yourself to be sucked into a conversation about art versus parody with Misha. Indulging him is a bad idea, I have a few scars to prove that, just so you know."
Eames sounds completely sober. Arthur frowns at him. This is the point where he realizes just how drunk he is. He can't figure out how he's supposed to get home and he urgently needs to sleep.
"Ah, you're one of those," Eames says, his chair rakes against the chipped linoleum as he pushes himself to his feet. "Come on then, while you still can."
Eames manhandles him through the kitchen of the restaurant they're in, simultaneously chatting to someone in Ukrainian. Arthur concentrates on not twisting an ankle. He puts his feet one in front of the other very deliberately. He thinks he's doing remarkably well and laughs to himself at how awesome he is.
"Blissful black out ignorance is eponymous," Eames mumbles as he shoves him in the passenger seat of the car. He leans over to buckle Arthur in, but Arthur lashes out and hits him in the tendon in his neck to indicate a broach of etiquette. Eames rubs the spot indignantly but he's also laughing quietly.
The next thing Arthur knows he's sitting on his own couch with Edith peering up at him from a nest of blankets to his left. She snorts in a judgmental sort of way. He's still drunk, but has clearly been asleep a while because it's daylight. Edith clamors out of her blanket nest and onto his lap. She wiggles around urgently before scrabbling away and across the floor towards the kitchen.
"Ok, ok,"
He realizes he's barefoot and his feet are filthy when he goes to stand up. His shirt's untucked, his sleeves are rolled up, and the bottom three buttons of his shirt are missing. He prefers to not contemplate the stains.
In the kitchen, Edith fixes him with a porcine gimlet stare, clearly not pleased to be neglected for the better part of a day. He feeds her while putting the kettle on to make coffee. "At least you don't have to get blood tests for the next year because you can't remember if you blew some downlow trucker in an alley, so don't give me any shit."
"You can forgo the HIV tests, love, the most undressed you got last night was when your trou fell to your ankles when you forgot how to work a urinal."
Arthur very precisely keeps preparing the coffee, beans in the grinder, grinder on, coffee in the press. He adds more beans and repeats since he has to double to amount. "I don't usually strip my clothes off to blow someone in an alley, but your best practices might differ."
"You think I'd let you out of my sight when I plied you with drink and set you loose amongst the lowlives of this fair city? I take my responsibilities seriously."
The kettle blows and Arthur pours the water over the coffee before finally looking at Eames over his shoulder. He's sitting on the couch on the other side of the island, one foot up on his knee. He's recently showered, hair still damp, in different clothes from yesterday, a tailored light beige suit that brings out the reddish highlights in his hair and unshaved beard. Arthur stares for what he knows is entirely too long to be smooth.
"I have a meeting," Eames smiles slow, dips his chin towards his chest a little. He taps a finger on the arm of the couch a couple times, too calculated to be casual. "I'll be back at about six."
There's no question to that. Eames maintains eye contact in an openly challenging manner. Arthur's just drunk enough still to let the gesture be alluring instead of annoying. He shrugs one shoulder and depresses the plunger on the coffee pot. "Suit yourself," he says because he can't just let it go completely.
He listens as Eames gets up and crosses the room. He steps up behind Arthur so that their legs bump, he grabs the counter on either side of Arthur, traps him in place. He runs his nose along Arthur's hairline over his ear.
When he draws breath, the noise is wet and the hair all over Arthur's body stands on end as his stomach tumbles. "This is your chance, the time to say no. After this, I can't promise this won't be messy."
Arthur holds himself completely still for the long seconds it takes Eames to push away and turn to meet his appointment.
Edith chirps when the front door clicks closed.
*
Arthur is a binary star who's lost his counterpoint. That is, until he's sitting in an Indian restaurant watching Eames dipping naan into a pot of aloo gobi listening to him sigh over how lax the security is for the Whitney's back catalog.
"I mean, honestly, what am I supposed to make of a gentleman telling me 'oh, but it's all boxed up and the labels are coded, they wouldn't know what they're stealing'? You tell me, because I'm damned if I can make sense of this fellow's thought process. As if hacking into a computer is harder than physically breaching...woolgathering? I'm boring you, am I?"
Arthur has been watching the way Eames's arms flex under the material of his shirt as he moves. He heard every word. He'd just had no rejoinder that wasn't perfectly ridiculous.
This is the fifth of what could be described as dates. Mostly they eat evening meals together and walk Edith.
He's just realized he's so in love that the way Eames sits is endearing.
Arthur clears his throat. "I'm going to have to stick to security consulting myself from now on, so you should walk me through this project. Don't they have firewalls to protect their data?" His eyes flick up to Eames's.
Eames is sitting very still, watching him back. Neither of them say anything, the ambient noise in the restaurant seems to rise and rise in a crescendo that Arthur realizes is his own pulse beating in his ears.
"Are we there finally?" Eames asks in a soft tone, barely audible above the clacking of flatwear and eddies of laughter.
"This was a very bad idea," Arthur sighs, He runs a hand through his hair. This is going to be a complete disaster.
Eames slouches a little more aggressively. "Yes, well, nothing to do about it now," he pushes his plate forward and sets his napkin on top of it.
"Don't get cold with me, this is all your fault! You knew what you were doing and systematically orchestrated it." Arthur lets out a breath, watches Eames turn his face away. He reaches out a hand and touches the back of Eames's wrist. "Look, I'm a dick sometimes, you already knew that. Get used to, I guess, since you're stuck with me." He stands up and tosses money out of his clip onto the table before grabbing Eames's elbow and pulling him up.
Out on the street he slides his arm so that their elbows are locked and leans himself against Eames's side. They both smell like curry and the thick New York City funk that never really washes off until you leave town.
"I love you, ok?" Arthur says with a little bite. "I hope you like what you paid for because it's nonrefundable."
Eames laughs, he drops their arms so he can grab Arthur's hand, their fingers sliding together and another pedestrian dancing around with a muttered "fuck off."
"Maybe I can regift you, I can make it a basket, you and the tins of tea my Aunt Mildred always sends me."
Arthur laughs with his head thrown back. He's happy.
**
OUTTAKE
Arthur keeps his place--why wouldn't he?==but he spends most of his time at Eames's brownstone. Edith's portrait hangs above the mantle in the living room. The title of the painting is "The Love of My Love Is Also Mine," but Arthur steadfastly refuses to acknowledge this.
They have a poker night, a negotiated television viewing schedule (Arthur will never ever admit to enjoying Doctor Who or that he has opinions on who the best companion is, but he might have a sockpuppet account on certain websites), they brunch (which is too gay for words so Arthur calls it "having an early lunch on Sundays"), and they have a moratorium on working together because that brings out the worst in each other.
That last thing is something new for Arthur, a limit put on the relationship to make it work better. Eames actually pays attention to Arthur's triggers and does his best to avoid pissing him off or taking advantage of him. Novel.
Eames gets wrapped up in his art if left alone for longer than strictly necessary. Sometimes that's not really a problem. Sometimes, though, he can become withdrawn, moody, dark if left at it for too long. He goes someplace in his own head that Arthur doesn't try to ferret out. They're discrete individuals, even if they bleed together at the edges more, rather than less, these days.
"Hey," Arthur leans against the jamb of the door with his ankles crossed. He's been watching Eames stare at one corner of his current canvas from different angles, turning the easel this way and that, for twenty minutes.
Eames doesn't respond.
"You've been in here all day," Arthur continues. "You need to take a break, eat something."
Eames huffs out an annoyed breath.
"You're getting fixated on this piece," Arthur pushes away from the door and slowly approaches the workspace. An old door lain over a couple sawhorses serves as a table and work surface for mixing paint. Currently there are several broken brushes strewn on the floor and an upturned can of turpentine leaking next to them. The piney smell is strong with the windows closed.
The painting is a semi-surrealist rendering of a IED attack, two veiled women crouch next to a smoldering car, a soldier's boot lies in the foreground, the laces seemingly alive, untied. There's no leg or foot.
Arthur's gotten to a place where he wants to burn the fucking thing.
"You have to eat." He pulls his hands out of his pockets and runs one through his hair. He touches Eames's shoulder with the other.
Eames shrugs him off. "Got my tea, now fuck off."
Arthur bites back the first ten responses as unhelpful. He sighs, which gets Eames's attention. "This isn't a job, it's a relationship, stop trying to manage me into submission."
Take 2884 of their biggest fight.
There is no correct response to Eames's salvo.
War is hell, it's a cliché. It is also true. Neither of them will ever be reassembled into who they were before their military service. They both have bad days.
Arthur puts his hand back on Eames's shoulder and doesn't let him shrug it off. This elicits a glare. Eames has paint splattered over his right cheek, black and the blue of the burqas. He needs to shave and his eyes are hard.
He's in pain, and Arthur can't do anything about it, therefore Arthur is in pain, too.
They stare each other down, neither of them giving in. Eames tries to shrug Arthur's hand off again, his mouth pinching. Arthur twists his fingers in the fabric of the t-shirt so the material pulls against Eames's throat. Eames's mouth parts and Arthur twists harder for a fraction of a second before Eames lunges to take him down, but Arthur's already rolling, ready for it.
They land in a pile of art refuse, dried out paint tubes, old rags, teabags, with Arthur on top still choking Eames with his own shirt. He lets go because Eames immediate shoves his hand down the back of Arthur's pants, fingers sure and deft, in the cleft of his ass before Arthur even manages to get their mouths together.
Eames strokes against his hole with paint stained fingers, gentle now that he's refocused, his mouth moving slowly, thick tongue huge in Arthur's mouth. Arthur holds both sides of Eames's face, desperate to fix what he didn't break.
He hates this current painting and all the similar ones; hates that he can't stitch up this wound and cluck over the need to be more careful.
Eames breaks the kiss. "Now don't do that, please, love, just don't," Eames's voice crumbles around the words, and he rapidly kisses across Arthur's cheek as he rolls them over. He pulls his hand out of Arthur's pants only to whip open the fly and reinsert it.
The problem with two broken empathic idiots in love is that they loop. Constantly trying to fix each other breaks something new.
"You're so fucking crazy," Arthur starts laughing, because he's half talking to himself and half talking to Eames and the bill fits both, so fuck it anyway.
Arthur feels the rumble of Eames's answering laughter before he hears it. They feed each other, Eames laughing into Arthur's throat as Arthur laughs up to the high, dim ceiling while Eames jerks him off.
Arthur only settles down when he can feel his orgasm press at him urgently. Eames's stubble burns his face as they kiss, real and vital in a way that still shocks him sometimes. Beards have always been a turnoff for him--until the day he found himself digging his nails into Eames's back, coming the top of his head off because of Eames wiping the hair under his bottom lip across Arthur's mouth over and over.
Eames kneels up and opens his own jeans without wiping his hand off, Arthur's come smeared next to the paint and scars. Arthur's fingers tremble slightly as he knocks Eames's hand away to smear his thumb proprietorially over the wet head of Eames's cock. Eames is loud during sex, he moans with the kind of abandon that Arthur suspects is a lifelong rebellion against dormitory living during boarding school. He's never asked, seems rude in an inappropriate way.
Eames sits on his heels, his hands roaming over Arthur's chest and belly. "You're way too clean," he murmurs. Arthur speeds up his stroking, waits for the second Eames's neck gives out and he hunches forward a little.
"Come here, dammit," he pulls harder, shoves at Eames with his knees to his backside and is rewarded with Eames crawling forward, his mouth falling further open as he cradles Arthur's head. He manages to stuff his cock into Arthur's mouth and frantically pump a couple of times before shouting unintelligibly and coming thick down Arthur's throat.
He gentlemanly tumbles onto his side so that he doesn't asphyxiate anyone. "You wreck me." His voice makes Arthur's mouth dry and his heart to beat a little faster.
"That feeling is mutual." Arthur rips his eyes away from the sight of Eames's glistening cock, his muscled arm thrown over his eyes, the way the light catches his body hair where his shirt's rucked up.
A high pitched squeal arrests his attention.
Edith comes galloping into the room. She leaps into the pile of rags and detritus, flinging rags into the air with her snout before running in circles around her prone owners.
She leaps on Eames stomach and back off with a squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! before launching herself at Arthur.
"I'm reconsidering my stance on bacon," Eames grumbles good-naturedly. Arthur covers Edith's ears and glares.
Here is a video of a miniature pig: piiiiiiiiiiiiiiggie!!
It fills this prompt.
There's a small xover cameo in the middle of this. If you don't recognize the person, that's fine, just ignore it. That was for Liz.
Thank you to green_postit for the beta.
Edith
Arthur, since his youngest days, has always been attracted to a certain type of unpredictable, chaos-inducing person.
In elementary school, his best friend Bryan fearlessly climbed to the top of the swingsets and play structures only to leap off. This evolved into roofs, which evolved into trees. Eventually, Bryan broke his collarbone toppling off of a ladder doing nothing more exotic than reclaiming a kite that was stuck in the eaves of a neighbor's house.
The template was set for Arthur by then.
He's raced around the world for Dom. He joined the Army for Rick-the Dom before Dom-who Arthur wasn't quite able to save from himself. He learned from that lesson: he had to be more vigilant, never flinch or back down from speaking his mind. But most importantly, when someone starts throwing themselves in the line of fire, the better part of valor is throwing yourself between them and the bullets. Friendship means going in first and taking the heaviest fire.
Arthur's well aware that some people call this codependency. He thinks that label was invented by people who set artificial barriers on love. Love isn't a choice, it's not something you do. Love is a state of being that consumes everything in its wake like paper on fire.
You either love someone or you don't, and if you love them, you only say no until it's obvious you're not going to get your way, then you fully commit to whatever bullshit thing the person is into (whether that be yoga, distance running, video editing, or arms smuggling).
Which is how Arthur ends up with a pet pig.
To be fair, the pig's previous owner was more of a fling than a potential life partner. Just another of the kind of guy Arthur ends up attached to--intense, intelligent, a total flake. Micah was a post-doc fellow in physics--which sounds like a completely staid type of profession, but oh, wrong! Arthur learned that during the prank war in Micah's department that coincided with their accidental cohabitation.
The relationship only lasts through Arthur's post-Fischer job smug euphoria. Oddly, it's not even his fault this time. CERN beckons and Arthur, six weeks into the life he had thought he was supposed to have been having for quite some time, is sitting on the couch he never really liked (but Mal had loved) with a bag of stale salt and vinegar chips (he doesn't like those either) watching indecipherable images flit across a television screen with a small black and white pig nestled against his knee.
Quark snuffles in the nest of afghans Arthur has carefully formed for her. Arthur glances down to see sleepy piglet eyes behind long white eyelashes. "I'm renaming you Edith," he informs her solemnly.
*
Arthur hasn't ever had a pet of his own. He's had plenty of shared-but-not-his pets. He grew up in a pretty normal family-divorced and remarried parents and a stepsister-and with that came his mother's inability to say no to someone abandoning a pet. He knows dogs well and cats tend to not be bothered by him.
His stepsister was a small rodent person and always had a guinea pig or a hamster when they were growing up (all with P-names, he still has no idea what that was about). Most of his partners have had dogs, friends as well-Mal hadn't eaten for weeks when her geriatric Pom, Camille, died between Phillipa and James's births.
Arthur knows fuck all about cohabiting on his own with named bacon. Edith is litter trained, so she doesn't have to be walked, really. She likes to lie in the sunny patches around the apartment, so Arthur installs a few cat beds around in the likeliest spots. He starts receiving pet catalogs out of the blue. He must not be blocking the tracking of his purchases that well, which is a red flag he ignores.
He and Edith share cheese sandwiches in the evening while listening to All Things Considered and reading Chinese bloggers on proxy servers. He discovers she loves to leap on bubblewrap and spends a couple hours one night tossing bubblewrap onto the floor and watching Edith gambol on it. His ribs ache from laughing when she finally tires of the game, indicated by her haughty tossing of the plastic into the air with her snout.
About the time that he thinks that her grunts are actual responses to his queries to her about what to watch on television, he realizes he might be having some kind of nervous breakdown. Edith doesn't seem to mind, if her contented snoring is anything to go by. He's had job offers-he's always got offers-but he's not really feeling any of them.
Since Micah left, Arthur's only really left his apartment to fetch the piggy supplies unavailable from Fresh Direct. That kind of hibernation's not totally unheard for him after a big job. He needs some time to decompress with the Dom situation sorted, and he's got more than enough money in the bank that he's not about to go hungry.
He's too self-aware for that line of thinking to really go anywhere. He's in mourning for Mal finally. His own, private mourning that he can allow now and not feel selfish about. There are no Cobol assassins after them, no Dom to hold together, no jobs to focus on.
"She would have liked you," Arthur says to Edith as he rubs between her eyes. She snorts back, enthusiastic for the petting. He sighs and feels extraordinarily lonely out of the blue. He thinks about calling someone and making up a bullshit excuse for the contact to talk about everything besides what's on his mind.
He's knows he's not going to do that.
This is how he ends up with Edith in a dogpark with a flask in his pocket at 3:24 p.m. on a Tuesday.
How the fuck Eames ends up in the same spot is something of a mystery.
*
Eames is wearing a t-shirt and jeans and has several days' worth of beard. He's not just wearing a t-shirt, he's wearing a faded blue shirt with holes in the collar, threadbare in a way that's hard to fake. Said shirt and his jeans are flecked with paint. His fingernails are stained underneath with more paint and he smells faintly of turpentine when Arthur approaches him.
"What in the fucking hell are you doing here?" Eames puts his cigarette out in a soda can. He's sitting on a bench and looks angry before he smothers it with his bored, disdain face.
Arthur's a little tipsy. "Why are you fucking with me?"
Eames blinks up at him. "We seem to be the cruel victims of coincidence." His tone is dry. Arthur and Eames have a certain level of tension in their relationship that stems from not being very good at reading each other. Arthur is not currently at his best, so he doesn't even attempt to suss whether Eames is putting him on. He just sits down next to him on the bench.
"What're you doing here?" he goes for the direct approach.
"As far as fundamental questions of existence go, that's a classic. Am I simply here to strive to reproduce and pass my genetic material on to another generation, an immortality of sorts? Am I here to complete some destiny set before me by supernatural entities? Am I here for no reason a'tall, just a cosmic crapshoot in which I got lucky?"
Arthur realizes that even with the meticulously researched background details and the minutiae of his CV, he doesn't really know Eames. He knows the collection of competencies he possesses-superlative marksmanship, quick on his feet, brilliant with strategy-but he's never really looked too close to see which bits of him are the sham and which bits are the genuine article. He hasn't ever cared all that much.
"You're so full of shit," Arthur intones. He palms his flask and pulls a swallow. Eames is watching him in the thin light of early afternoon. He has freckles his on his cheeks and his beard burns toward red in the sunlight. Arthur offers the flask over.
"Arthur, I know we're hardly intimate friends, but wouldn't it behoove you to ascertain whether I'm here to harm you before you get blotto?" He takes the flask and drains half of it in one long drink.
"Why're you here?" Arthur asks again. He turns to watch Edith frolicking with a miniature labradoodle and a couple of pugs. They’re playing some sort of leap up, skitter away game. Arthur can hear Edith's delighted squeals over the cacophony of barking.
"I like the light here." Eames pulls a stub of pencil out from behind his ear and a sketchbook out of the messenger bag at his feet. "Which of them is yours?" He doesn't ask if one of the animals is Arthur's.
"The pig."
"I feel like there's something of a story there," Eames's tone is light, but there's no laughter there, and when Arthur turns to look at him he's watching back.
*
Arthur feels strange about tethering Edith to a table so Eames and he can share a drink on the sidewalk. He decides instead, impulsively, to allow Eames to see where he lives so that Edith can be left in the comfort of her own home.
Eames patters out a color commentary as they amble from Tompkins Square Park to Arthur's building. "That fellow had better get used to being single soon if he keeps up like that," to a very young man overtly flirting with another woman as his girlfriend glares daggers. "Fucking cyclists," directed loudly at the cyclist who nearly topples them over in a crosswalk. "I think your pig is giving me a gimlet eye, what did you tell him about me? " said in a suspicious tone directly to Edith where she's nestled against Arthur's back in the carrier.
"She. Her name's Edith." Arthur's just loose enough to not feel self-conscious about being a tad defensive over the honor of his pig.
"Of course it is. Hello, Edith, charmed. Your bristles are quite fetching." He reaches out to let Edith smell his fingers, like a dog. She snuffles in her inscrutable porcine fashion. "I'm clutching my totem right now, just so we're all above board." Eames's right hand is stuffed in his front pocket.
"Are you wearing sandals?" Arthur doesn't know how he didn't notice that immediately. He reaches in his own pocket for his die as he stares at Eames's naked toes.
"You didn't notice the whole bohemian artiste ensemble, dear?"
They've stopped on the sidewalk in front of Arthur's building. Arthur hesitates. "Is this you, or is this a job?" he's not even sure why he cares. Maybe part of his being at loose ends is becoming the kind of person who wants to delineate genuineness from artifice for more than professional reasons.
Eames plucks at his bottom lip with his stained fingers. "I'm on holiday at the mo, Arthur, no job. Why would I bother so close in?"
Indeed, why would they bother?
He turns and walks up the front steps.
*
Arthur's had this apartment for years. It's more or less his permanent home. He isn't so arrogant as to try to hide where he lives from Interested Parties-File 17, the branch of the CIA that supposedly tracks dreamsharing, for instance. Those guys are a fucking joke, and he's not concerned. He was a little less sanguine about his old Pentagon bosses subtly letting him know they keep an eye on him, but he sticks mostly to corporate work so they leave him alone for the time being (Dom's the one they're worried about anyway, for good reason).
Eames is probably the kind of attention Arthur doesn't want in his professionally managed life, but fuck if he cares at the moment. He tosses his keys into the Delft bluewear bowl on the halltree and carefully peels Edith's sling off his back. He lets her loose and she sprints into the kitchen to root around in her food bowl.
"I'm surprised you don't dress her in booties." Eames scratches his beard and raises his eyebrows. "Because of the floor."
Arthur looks down at the floor. "Oh, it's really authentic looking laminate." Eames is watching him with a half smile; one of his eyebrows wiggles. "Not because of Edith. I had an incident a few years ago. Blood seeps into the cracks in wood and you can't get it out. Laminate just wipes clean." The incident had been Dare, his army buddy, tripping and falling on a boning knife because he was so tweaked out on Redbull, but Arthur can sound dangerous and mysterious if he wants.
"Cut yourself shaving, is it?" Eames, apparently, finds mystery amusing.
"Do you want a drink?" Arthur rolls his eyes in what he imagines to be a threatening way. Eames continues to smile.
"What's it like to be a free man?" Eames trails behind Arthur, eyes skimming the open brickwork, the almost floor to ceiling windows letting in the grey varnished New York sunshine. "I don't think I've ever seen you outside of your element as someone's personal fireman."
That's true. Their sort don't socialize so much as form familial units or remain wary of each other.
There's not a lot of in between.
Arthur's kitchen is a bit of Provincial France in the middle of the Lower East Side. When he bought the place Mal had been in an interior decorating phase, nesting in his space because she and Dom had been in an Epic Battle over which way the toilet paper oriented or if teal was blue or green. His countertops are bright blue tile and the backsplash is a riot of red/blue/yellow/white tile. The reclaimed cabinet doors are sanded down and painted bright, cherry red.
Everything is alive and ready to tell you about it.
Arthur's used to the plate slots and the deep ceramic sink, so he's surprised by Eames's whistle as he slaps his palm flat on his stomach. "I'm reordering my worldview. If you have a tagine I might faint."
"Of course I do, you know how enthusiastic gay men get at the holidays. I also have monogrammed towels." He's used those to mop up the worst sorts of accidents.
Edith is flopped in her kitchen bed, head peaking over the side of the memoryfoam bunting. She avidly watches as Arthur opens the liquor cabinet-literally a cabinet someone else would use for dishes or spices-but filled with booze.
"Can I be so bold as to offer to make the cocktails?" Eames slinks up behind him and just plucks the cocktail shaker off the shelf.
"Sure, why not." Arthur bends down to scratch behind Edith's ear. He feels Eames's eyes on him, but he doesn't bother to worry if he's being mocked.
The kitchen's open format and faces tall windows with a brown leather couch beneath. Arthur arranges himself on the couch and pats the cushion next to him. Tiny hooves immediately skitter over the floor. He has to reach down to boost her up, but Edith settles herself to her liking, head on Arthur's knee.
"What're you doing in New York?" Arthur isn't sure if this is going to be an interrogation or a conversation or something in between.
"Painting, that much should be obvious, even to you." The barb doesn't sound cruel so much as comfortable. Eames looks over his shoulder. "You do have hobbies, don't you?"
Arthur supposed he does-or did-at one point.
Eames hands him a tumbler full of an amber cocktail. It smells spicy. Arthur doesn't bother to ask what it is. A Rusty Nail, apparently.
"What do you do when you're in the city, when you're not working?" Eames sits on the other end of the couch, he's shed his sandals and angles one foot under his thigh so he can lean his elbow on the back of the couch.
Arthur shrugs one shoulder. Edith hooves at him slightly. "Listen to live music, sometimes go to art shows. I used to like the flower market."
"Have you done any of those things of late?" Eames's voice is neutral, the unjudgmental evenness of a therapist.
"Why do you care?" The words are sort of a placeholder. He doesn't really feel like explaining himself, but he's also not really aggro.
"I'd be pretty shit at my job if I couldn't recognize the listlessness of depression, yeah? " The ice rattles in his glass. "Is this your usual, post-job?"
"No," Arthur answers honestly. His hand falls on Edith's back.
Eames hums in the back of his throat. "I guess there's nothing for it, we'll have to have a fling to take your mind off the bereavement."
Arthur laughs at that, loud enough to send Edith scuttling across the floor to throw herself under a blanket in her bed in the living room.
Somehow this lands him in Brooklyn.
*
Gisele is a concept artist.
Arthur's only slightly buzzed now. A steady application of kebabs and rice smothered the booze into submission so he can make smalltalk without sneering or bolting for the door.
"Yes, I suppose the pervasive nature of irony does destroy the innocence of artistic expression." Arthur is only slightly mollified to be trapped in this situation by the fact that he could kill everyone in the room utilizing the art installation itself. He gazes at the science fair volcanoes strewn around the room, their livid red-bulbed light casting the room in a sinister tilt.
Arthur smells tobacco and feels fingertips on the small of his back almost instantaneously. "May I borrow this gentlemen?" Eames is spinning Arthur away from Gisele's glare before she can protest.
"If this is your best attempt to cheer me up, I'd hate to see you trying to ruin my day." Arthur shrugs Eames off, but it's useless unless he wants to do nerve damage because Eames just flows right back in with his arm around Arthur's waist and head turned in a conspiratorial manner up slightly to whisper in Arthur's ear.
"Not enjoying the local color?" His laughter ruffles the fine hairs above Arthur's ear. Arthur wonders what the fuck he's gotten himself into and why he doesn't just get on a train and go home. No, ok, he tries to wonder that but he knows exactly why. This is the pattern. Eames is just mercurial enough to hit Arthur's buttons. "We're just here to meet Rory."
Rory turns out to be a large, red-haired guy with a Liverpool accent that Eames is very mysterious about. Rory produces a bottle of schnapps. He's just back from Hungary, you see.
"Oh, slivovitz. This should be an interesting evening." Arthur feels the alcohol burn off the ten top layers of mucus membrane as it goes down. Eames is watching him, his eyelashes shielding his eyes as the three of them stand under a streetlight waiting for the crosswalk sign to change.
"Don't land me in the clink tonight, you and your boy here," Rory says out of the blue. Their relationship resolves in Arthur's mind, Rory is a friend. Eames is bringing Arthur into his real life.
"This one's safe as houses, mate, no worries," Eames's accent has slithered sideways in the last hour. This is not the Eames of boardrooms and business meetings, not even the Eames that pokes fun at Arthur's rigid scheduling and grooming. This could be the real person. Probably not, though.
"Pull the other one, you twat, he's got the look of a bare knuckles fighter. " Rory cuts his eyes at Arthur, he's smiling what appears good-naturedly as he literally ribs his elbow into Eames's side. "Maybe we can take a tour 'round that way later."
"Fuck off." Eames fake punches at Rory's face. "Not tonight. Maybe another night."
Illegal boxing matches are hardly surprising when it comes to Eames. "I'm not letting you pimp me out to make twenty bucks on a thrown fight." Arthur rolls his eyes.
Rory and Eames both laugh uproariously. "You," Rory points at Arthur. "I like. Stand up for yourself or you'll wake up one morning handcuffed to a bed wearing someone else's pants backwards covered in sesame seeds with a chicken pecking at your balls."
This seems strangely specific to be a randomly strung together scenario. Arthur cracks a smile and raises an eyebrow at Eames.
"Arthur has a pet pig," Eames informs Rory pointing at Arthur with his thumb.
"I guess you know what you're in for then," Rory says as they push in the backdoor of what is apparently a jazz club.
The jazz club Rory owns.
The jazz club and illegal gambling den that Rory owns.
*
Arthur's first order of business is to excuse himself so he can roll his die about 36 times in a row in the blissful privacy of the bathroom. Either someone's cracked his totem or this is real. He's ambivalent about picking a scenario he prefers. He thinks he might be enjoying himself. He can't remember the last time he did something just for the fuck of it.
Eames is waiting on the other side of the bathroom door, somehow managing to blend into the flocked wallpaper and dark woodwork. His tattoos and casual slouch make him look dangerous in the exact sort of way that Arthur's never been able to pull off. He's always had to be the wild card, the one everyone expects to pick off first because of his baby face and slight build. People cross the street to avoid Eames, they ask Arthur to watch their toddler while they futz with the ATM.
Eames smiles with one side of his mouth and bobs his chin towards him. "Satisfied?"
"Hardly." Arthur replies without thinking. Eames's laughter is the wild cackle Arthur's not heard much of before.
"Normally I'd say something like 'I can certainly help you with that' or the like, but I'll spare us both." He straightens and pulls himself away from the wall as he cracks his neck. Eames is always just so, transparently professional and reserved. This isn't that guy, which adds to the surreal ambiance. "Do you play pool?"
"I can play pool, I wouldn't say I'm a pool player." Arthur's lowered his voice to match the soft tone Eames has taken. They can walk side by side down the corridor, but just, their arms brush from shoulder to elbow.
"Ah." Eames produces a toothpick from his back pocket. "Maybe you're not much of a gambler?"
Which is utterly ridiculous. They're all addicted to adrenaline, control freaks, compulsive. "Have you met someone in our line of work who doesn't gamble when off the job?"
Eames laughs again, this time a quiet rumble. "What's your game then?"
"You're not going to impress me by already knowing?" They've paused in front of a heavy wooden door with a keypad lock. Eames watches him with his usual neutral expression for a couple of long seconds that feel suddenly charged. Arthur feels like there's some kind of threat lingering in the air.
"Don't be a tit, let the mask crack. We're just mates. This is a good time, not a fucking challenge."
"Huh. Because I think you almost hit me a minute ago."
Eames types a code into the pad. He smiles over his shoulder. "Only a friendly punch up, though."
*
This is how Arthur is introduced to Eames's secret life as the least dodgey person in a room.
In one corner is a clutch of Russians discussing dogfighting simultaneously with meth trafficking over a game of dice. At the bar is someone Arthur does his best not to recognize from Haag war criminal bulletins. The atmosphere is very speak-easy with dim lighting, like an old jazz photograph where the only filter needed for the lens was the cigarette smoke.
About that, everyone appears to be smoking. Inside. "Were we teleported to Beijing?" he asks Eames as he pulls out a chair to settle himself at the already occupied table. Their new companion greets them in Mandarin. Eames barks out a laugh as Arthur scrutinizes a very familiar face.
The guy sticks his hand out, a wide smile making him looks a bit manic. Before he can open his mouth Arthur says "I know who you are."
"Well, of course you do," creases appear at the corners of blue eyes as he laughs.
"I didn't realize you were real," Arthur looks at Eames who's smiling back with one eyebrow lifted. Arthur has seen this particular individual in Eames's dreams for years. Once he was an organ grinder with a dancing monkey inexplicably parked on a busy street corner in Dallas; another time, in a gorilla suit and cowboy hat in an elevator in an otherwise buttoned-down business complex; one very memorable time, eating chalk as part of a background scene in a playground. The chalk was pastel and his teeth were streaked with blue and pink.
"I am, indeed, real," the guy intones solemnly as the band tunes up on the raised dais across the room.
"What're you drinking, Mr. Collins?" Eames asks, pitching his voice over the swell of dixieland fusion.
"Rumple Minz," is the reply.
Arthur hasn't drank flavored schnapps since he was about nineteen.
They're in a room full of Interpol's Most Wanted, Eames appears to be on first name basis with everyone, and that implausible Misha Collins projection is real.
Arthur doesn't realize this is just the beginning of his evening.
*
A list of things Arthur learns in the next hour or so:
Eames can not only count cards while smoking a joint and downing shots, he can do so to the tune of several K and laugh when he (purposefully) blows a hand.
Russian mobsters get sentimental when they hear Afro-American spirituals.
Rumple Minze is basically liquefied toothpaste with cocaine in it.
He's not nearly as competitive when sedated on liquid toothpaste.
*
He doesn't remember agreeing to go to Brighton Beach.
He's lost his shoes and socks and several buttons off his shirt. Eames has a purpling fist mark on his left cheek and a new best friend named Ivan. The pierogis are decent and help to stop the homemade aquavit from sloshing around too much in his stomach.
He's the level of drunk where he thinks there's a good chance he won't remember any of this the next day. So he says, "I'm enjoying myself" to Eames, because why the fuck not?
Eames finishes chewing and smiles, his eyes dipping closed for a half second, eyelashes sweeping his cheeks fondly, Arthur thinks. "My first indication that this might be the case was when you allowed yourself to be sucked into a conversation about art versus parody with Misha. Indulging him is a bad idea, I have a few scars to prove that, just so you know."
Eames sounds completely sober. Arthur frowns at him. This is the point where he realizes just how drunk he is. He can't figure out how he's supposed to get home and he urgently needs to sleep.
"Ah, you're one of those," Eames says, his chair rakes against the chipped linoleum as he pushes himself to his feet. "Come on then, while you still can."
Eames manhandles him through the kitchen of the restaurant they're in, simultaneously chatting to someone in Ukrainian. Arthur concentrates on not twisting an ankle. He puts his feet one in front of the other very deliberately. He thinks he's doing remarkably well and laughs to himself at how awesome he is.
"Blissful black out ignorance is eponymous," Eames mumbles as he shoves him in the passenger seat of the car. He leans over to buckle Arthur in, but Arthur lashes out and hits him in the tendon in his neck to indicate a broach of etiquette. Eames rubs the spot indignantly but he's also laughing quietly.
The next thing Arthur knows he's sitting on his own couch with Edith peering up at him from a nest of blankets to his left. She snorts in a judgmental sort of way. He's still drunk, but has clearly been asleep a while because it's daylight. Edith clamors out of her blanket nest and onto his lap. She wiggles around urgently before scrabbling away and across the floor towards the kitchen.
"Ok, ok,"
He realizes he's barefoot and his feet are filthy when he goes to stand up. His shirt's untucked, his sleeves are rolled up, and the bottom three buttons of his shirt are missing. He prefers to not contemplate the stains.
In the kitchen, Edith fixes him with a porcine gimlet stare, clearly not pleased to be neglected for the better part of a day. He feeds her while putting the kettle on to make coffee. "At least you don't have to get blood tests for the next year because you can't remember if you blew some downlow trucker in an alley, so don't give me any shit."
"You can forgo the HIV tests, love, the most undressed you got last night was when your trou fell to your ankles when you forgot how to work a urinal."
Arthur very precisely keeps preparing the coffee, beans in the grinder, grinder on, coffee in the press. He adds more beans and repeats since he has to double to amount. "I don't usually strip my clothes off to blow someone in an alley, but your best practices might differ."
"You think I'd let you out of my sight when I plied you with drink and set you loose amongst the lowlives of this fair city? I take my responsibilities seriously."
The kettle blows and Arthur pours the water over the coffee before finally looking at Eames over his shoulder. He's sitting on the couch on the other side of the island, one foot up on his knee. He's recently showered, hair still damp, in different clothes from yesterday, a tailored light beige suit that brings out the reddish highlights in his hair and unshaved beard. Arthur stares for what he knows is entirely too long to be smooth.
"I have a meeting," Eames smiles slow, dips his chin towards his chest a little. He taps a finger on the arm of the couch a couple times, too calculated to be casual. "I'll be back at about six."
There's no question to that. Eames maintains eye contact in an openly challenging manner. Arthur's just drunk enough still to let the gesture be alluring instead of annoying. He shrugs one shoulder and depresses the plunger on the coffee pot. "Suit yourself," he says because he can't just let it go completely.
He listens as Eames gets up and crosses the room. He steps up behind Arthur so that their legs bump, he grabs the counter on either side of Arthur, traps him in place. He runs his nose along Arthur's hairline over his ear.
When he draws breath, the noise is wet and the hair all over Arthur's body stands on end as his stomach tumbles. "This is your chance, the time to say no. After this, I can't promise this won't be messy."
Arthur holds himself completely still for the long seconds it takes Eames to push away and turn to meet his appointment.
Edith chirps when the front door clicks closed.
*
Arthur is a binary star who's lost his counterpoint. That is, until he's sitting in an Indian restaurant watching Eames dipping naan into a pot of aloo gobi listening to him sigh over how lax the security is for the Whitney's back catalog.
"I mean, honestly, what am I supposed to make of a gentleman telling me 'oh, but it's all boxed up and the labels are coded, they wouldn't know what they're stealing'? You tell me, because I'm damned if I can make sense of this fellow's thought process. As if hacking into a computer is harder than physically breaching...woolgathering? I'm boring you, am I?"
Arthur has been watching the way Eames's arms flex under the material of his shirt as he moves. He heard every word. He'd just had no rejoinder that wasn't perfectly ridiculous.
This is the fifth of what could be described as dates. Mostly they eat evening meals together and walk Edith.
He's just realized he's so in love that the way Eames sits is endearing.
Arthur clears his throat. "I'm going to have to stick to security consulting myself from now on, so you should walk me through this project. Don't they have firewalls to protect their data?" His eyes flick up to Eames's.
Eames is sitting very still, watching him back. Neither of them say anything, the ambient noise in the restaurant seems to rise and rise in a crescendo that Arthur realizes is his own pulse beating in his ears.
"Are we there finally?" Eames asks in a soft tone, barely audible above the clacking of flatwear and eddies of laughter.
"This was a very bad idea," Arthur sighs, He runs a hand through his hair. This is going to be a complete disaster.
Eames slouches a little more aggressively. "Yes, well, nothing to do about it now," he pushes his plate forward and sets his napkin on top of it.
"Don't get cold with me, this is all your fault! You knew what you were doing and systematically orchestrated it." Arthur lets out a breath, watches Eames turn his face away. He reaches out a hand and touches the back of Eames's wrist. "Look, I'm a dick sometimes, you already knew that. Get used to, I guess, since you're stuck with me." He stands up and tosses money out of his clip onto the table before grabbing Eames's elbow and pulling him up.
Out on the street he slides his arm so that their elbows are locked and leans himself against Eames's side. They both smell like curry and the thick New York City funk that never really washes off until you leave town.
"I love you, ok?" Arthur says with a little bite. "I hope you like what you paid for because it's nonrefundable."
Eames laughs, he drops their arms so he can grab Arthur's hand, their fingers sliding together and another pedestrian dancing around with a muttered "fuck off."
"Maybe I can regift you, I can make it a basket, you and the tins of tea my Aunt Mildred always sends me."
Arthur laughs with his head thrown back. He's happy.
**
OUTTAKE
Arthur keeps his place--why wouldn't he?==but he spends most of his time at Eames's brownstone. Edith's portrait hangs above the mantle in the living room. The title of the painting is "The Love of My Love Is Also Mine," but Arthur steadfastly refuses to acknowledge this.
They have a poker night, a negotiated television viewing schedule (Arthur will never ever admit to enjoying Doctor Who or that he has opinions on who the best companion is, but he might have a sockpuppet account on certain websites), they brunch (which is too gay for words so Arthur calls it "having an early lunch on Sundays"), and they have a moratorium on working together because that brings out the worst in each other.
That last thing is something new for Arthur, a limit put on the relationship to make it work better. Eames actually pays attention to Arthur's triggers and does his best to avoid pissing him off or taking advantage of him. Novel.
Eames gets wrapped up in his art if left alone for longer than strictly necessary. Sometimes that's not really a problem. Sometimes, though, he can become withdrawn, moody, dark if left at it for too long. He goes someplace in his own head that Arthur doesn't try to ferret out. They're discrete individuals, even if they bleed together at the edges more, rather than less, these days.
"Hey," Arthur leans against the jamb of the door with his ankles crossed. He's been watching Eames stare at one corner of his current canvas from different angles, turning the easel this way and that, for twenty minutes.
Eames doesn't respond.
"You've been in here all day," Arthur continues. "You need to take a break, eat something."
Eames huffs out an annoyed breath.
"You're getting fixated on this piece," Arthur pushes away from the door and slowly approaches the workspace. An old door lain over a couple sawhorses serves as a table and work surface for mixing paint. Currently there are several broken brushes strewn on the floor and an upturned can of turpentine leaking next to them. The piney smell is strong with the windows closed.
The painting is a semi-surrealist rendering of a IED attack, two veiled women crouch next to a smoldering car, a soldier's boot lies in the foreground, the laces seemingly alive, untied. There's no leg or foot.
Arthur's gotten to a place where he wants to burn the fucking thing.
"You have to eat." He pulls his hands out of his pockets and runs one through his hair. He touches Eames's shoulder with the other.
Eames shrugs him off. "Got my tea, now fuck off."
Arthur bites back the first ten responses as unhelpful. He sighs, which gets Eames's attention. "This isn't a job, it's a relationship, stop trying to manage me into submission."
Take 2884 of their biggest fight.
There is no correct response to Eames's salvo.
War is hell, it's a cliché. It is also true. Neither of them will ever be reassembled into who they were before their military service. They both have bad days.
Arthur puts his hand back on Eames's shoulder and doesn't let him shrug it off. This elicits a glare. Eames has paint splattered over his right cheek, black and the blue of the burqas. He needs to shave and his eyes are hard.
He's in pain, and Arthur can't do anything about it, therefore Arthur is in pain, too.
They stare each other down, neither of them giving in. Eames tries to shrug Arthur's hand off again, his mouth pinching. Arthur twists his fingers in the fabric of the t-shirt so the material pulls against Eames's throat. Eames's mouth parts and Arthur twists harder for a fraction of a second before Eames lunges to take him down, but Arthur's already rolling, ready for it.
They land in a pile of art refuse, dried out paint tubes, old rags, teabags, with Arthur on top still choking Eames with his own shirt. He lets go because Eames immediate shoves his hand down the back of Arthur's pants, fingers sure and deft, in the cleft of his ass before Arthur even manages to get their mouths together.
Eames strokes against his hole with paint stained fingers, gentle now that he's refocused, his mouth moving slowly, thick tongue huge in Arthur's mouth. Arthur holds both sides of Eames's face, desperate to fix what he didn't break.
He hates this current painting and all the similar ones; hates that he can't stitch up this wound and cluck over the need to be more careful.
Eames breaks the kiss. "Now don't do that, please, love, just don't," Eames's voice crumbles around the words, and he rapidly kisses across Arthur's cheek as he rolls them over. He pulls his hand out of Arthur's pants only to whip open the fly and reinsert it.
The problem with two broken empathic idiots in love is that they loop. Constantly trying to fix each other breaks something new.
"You're so fucking crazy," Arthur starts laughing, because he's half talking to himself and half talking to Eames and the bill fits both, so fuck it anyway.
Arthur feels the rumble of Eames's answering laughter before he hears it. They feed each other, Eames laughing into Arthur's throat as Arthur laughs up to the high, dim ceiling while Eames jerks him off.
Arthur only settles down when he can feel his orgasm press at him urgently. Eames's stubble burns his face as they kiss, real and vital in a way that still shocks him sometimes. Beards have always been a turnoff for him--until the day he found himself digging his nails into Eames's back, coming the top of his head off because of Eames wiping the hair under his bottom lip across Arthur's mouth over and over.
Eames kneels up and opens his own jeans without wiping his hand off, Arthur's come smeared next to the paint and scars. Arthur's fingers tremble slightly as he knocks Eames's hand away to smear his thumb proprietorially over the wet head of Eames's cock. Eames is loud during sex, he moans with the kind of abandon that Arthur suspects is a lifelong rebellion against dormitory living during boarding school. He's never asked, seems rude in an inappropriate way.
Eames sits on his heels, his hands roaming over Arthur's chest and belly. "You're way too clean," he murmurs. Arthur speeds up his stroking, waits for the second Eames's neck gives out and he hunches forward a little.
"Come here, dammit," he pulls harder, shoves at Eames with his knees to his backside and is rewarded with Eames crawling forward, his mouth falling further open as he cradles Arthur's head. He manages to stuff his cock into Arthur's mouth and frantically pump a couple of times before shouting unintelligibly and coming thick down Arthur's throat.
He gentlemanly tumbles onto his side so that he doesn't asphyxiate anyone. "You wreck me." His voice makes Arthur's mouth dry and his heart to beat a little faster.
"That feeling is mutual." Arthur rips his eyes away from the sight of Eames's glistening cock, his muscled arm thrown over his eyes, the way the light catches his body hair where his shirt's rucked up.
A high pitched squeal arrests his attention.
Edith comes galloping into the room. She leaps into the pile of rags and detritus, flinging rags into the air with her snout before running in circles around her prone owners.
She leaps on Eames stomach and back off with a squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! before launching herself at Arthur.
"I'm reconsidering my stance on bacon," Eames grumbles good-naturedly. Arthur covers Edith's ears and glares.
Here is a video of a miniature pig: piiiiiiiiiiiiiiggie!!