(03) → time is the mind (the hand that makes)
/ / “I create the whole universe, blink by blink.”
Eames didn’t expect Arthur to have a cat. He is pure white with giant blue eyes and looks as if he came straight out of a cat food commercial. And he is nice, for the most part, nuzzling against Eames’s leg and meowing up a storm. But there is something fiercely protective about him, and he is purring quietly at Arthur’s side just moments afterward.
Eames is here on business, he tells himself. He is here to tell Arthur that he is going to Venice for the next two months and that no he could not have told him this over the phone and no he will not miss him. This is the kind of thing that business partners should do face-to-face, to establish a friendlier working environment and darling, I think your cat likes me.
“He doesn’t,” Arthur deadpans, the feline curled up in his lap. “He leads everyone on. He will pretend to like you so you’ll give him food and pet him. I think he kind of hates you, actually.”
Eames frowns, and the cat peers up at him and purrs in the most innocent of ways, and it’s actually quite unsettling. “What’s the little bugger’s name, anyway?” He asks, and he expects it to be something sweet or French, maybe.
“Grendel,” Arthur says casually.
Eames does not go to Venice.
*
He shows up on Arthur’s doorstep two weeks later with a grocery bag full of different types of cat food and toys.
“I thought you were in Venice,” Arthur mutters, taking the grocery bag and setting it on the counter. “Grendel isn’t going to like you for this, by the way. He’s just using you.”
“He and I respect each other. We’ve got a thing now.” Eames winks at the cat, who is far too busy stretching out along the cabinet in an attempt to claim his food. Eames opens a can experimentally. Grendel meows.
“Where’s the food dish?”
Arthur scowls. “You two don’t have a thing and it’s in the living room. Bastard.”
“Your hospitality towards guests is very endearing, Arthur.” Eames leans back against the counter, folds his arms across his chest. “Cobb tells me you’re taking some time off from the job.”
Arthur squats down next to the cat, strokes over his head. “Remind me to never tell Cobb of my personal agenda.”
Eames chuckles and pulls out a cigar. “What exactly is on this agenda of yours that’s preventing you from work? Taking a vacation? Getting hitched? Hopefully nothing boring, or I’ll be very disappointed.”
“It’s very boring. Textbook dull, actually. I’m going to see the largest collection of stamps.”
“Send me a postcard, then,” Eames says, smoke tumbling from his lips. Arthur’s heart skips a beat.
It’s a beat too many.
*
Arthur isn’t really sure what makes Eames come over. But Eames claims he just has this thing. “I’m going to be honest with you, I can’t really keep myself away. I think of the Fischer job and that suit you wore and I’m… I’m really going to get all hot and bothered just thinking about it.”
Arthur glares at him.
“Actually, Cobb told me you had a cat. I didn’t believe him. It’s really as simple as that.”
It’s never that simple with Eames, but Arthur doesn’t ask anything more.
*
Eames shows up the next day. He does not say hello to Grendel or Arthur. It’s raining outside and Eames is getting soaked and Arthur has tried to show him in several times but the forger doesn’t budge.
“How bad is it?” He keeps asking, and Arthur won’t answer him and Eames is yelling now. “I’m going to leave,” Eames shouts over the storm, and it feels like there’s a mile of wind and rain between them. “And I’m going to come back tomorrow and we’re going to bloody talk about this, you complete fool.”
Arthur stands outside in the rain for a very long time. Grendel meows in the doorway.
*
Eames comes back, as promised.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Just because we work together doesn’t mean you’re entitled to know.” Now that Eames looks, really looks, he can see that Arthur is not well. He could have easily blamed it on his workload last week. It’s funny how things don’t really change at all until you know something’s different.
Arthur shows Eames in. He sits down at the kitchen table, takes a sip of the beer Arthur offers. This is the kind of thing you drink beer over, he thinks. Like friends do, but he and Eames could hardly be considered friends. He doesn’t even really know what they are, and that’s what makes this harder. Or easier, maybe.
“Cobb had no right to tell you,” Arthur finally says, and Eames shakes his head. “He bloody well did.”
Arthur really wants to drink. He’s a lightweight - it wouldn’t take much to do him in. But that seems a bit too ordinary, and Arthur isn’t one for clichés.
“You can just spring it on me, you know. How long’ve you got? A year? Two?” Eames drinks. He drinks a lot. And Arthur doesn’t worry because it’s okay to be drunk right now.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll see forty.”
And Eames pauses, because Arthur’s always seemed a bit older to him, and hearing that makes him realize that Arthur is still very young. “How old are you, love?”
Arthur takes a sip of his beer. Grendel ends up on his lap and purrs, rubs his head against Arthur’s stomach. “I’m twenty-five, Mr. Eames.”
Eames stares for a very long time, takes another cautious sip of his beer, and quite honestly wants to cry right then and there, because it really isn’t fair at all.
/ / “For all I knew he might be telling me gibberish on purpose. I sat down. Let him babble.”
“I just think it’s all kind of gone to shit,” Arthur says. “Dreaming, you know? It’s not worth it anymore.” He is drunk. I am drunk, he thinks, and takes another sip of his beer. Eames is sitting next to him. They are at a bar in upstate New York. They are both drunk. Eames chugs a shot, asks for another.
"Everything is shit. Except you, love."
And Arthur isn’t really sure what that means, but they are drunk. It doesn’t really have to make much sense, anyway.
/ / "Bulls do such things, though they don't even know that the calves they defend are theirs."
It snows.
Arthur comes down with the flu. Except it’s not just the flu, because when your body is being eaten away by cancer, it’s never just the flu. He is awfully, terribly sick. He sleeps through eight phone calls. He falls in and out of sleep and wakes up every time staring at something new by the bed. First, a glass of water. Then, toast. After that, there’s a change of clothes, and someone helps him up, arm strong around his waist and he moves without thinking.
“Let’s get you warmed up, darling,” and Arthur doesn’t understand how Eames got here. “Okay,” he mumbles, only standing because Eames has him held against his chest, very carefully tugging off his shirt, his pants, turning on the water and coaxing him into the bathtub.
“You should come home with me,” Eames says quietly. He is watching Arthur. He is also smoking a cigar. It is a high-class, expensive cigar, and Arthur watches the smoke curl from Eames’s mouth like he’s a Cheshire cat. “You can even bring that lousy feline of yours.”
Arthur does not answer him. He closes his eyes and pretends it’s his own breath curling from Eames’s lips, because he’s positive that his mouth would taste wonderful right now.
*
Eames leaves in the morning. He leaves no trace that he was ever there and Arthur misses him deeply and painfully, like a phantom limb.
*
Arthur sleeps. He dreams of the smoke from Eames’s mouth, recreates the curl of it in his own mind, imagines his mouth crushed against the forger’s, vividly constructs the way they’d move so fluidly, like bathwater. He imagines Eames holding him upright, whispering a quiet darling and believes that this is as close to love he will ever get.
He’s okay with that.
/ / “I was younger then. Still playing cat and mouse with the universe.”
Eames calls him from a payphone in Ohio. Arthur hasn’t heard from him in three months. And twelve days, if he’s counting. He’s not.
“I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” Eames mumbles. Arthur can hear the sound of a bus in the background. He wants to ask Eames if he’s moving further away or coming back.
“Then come see,” Arthur says, bitterly, because it’s not up to Eames to determine how these things play out anymore. It isn’t fair.
Eames doesn’t speak, and Arthur can still hear the bus, the tires, the squeak of the door, the rattle of change, and he imagines Eames sitting down next to a stranger and charming her, the curl of smoke around his lips.
“Cobb tells me you want to start working again. You shouldn’t. You should-“
“I should what? Sit around on the fucking floor and cry my eyes out over ice cream and Oprah? Fuck you, Eames. You just left.”
The bus starts moving, engine turning over, wheels whirring. The line goes quiet and Arthur wonders if Eames has hung up.
“You should come home with me,” Eames whispers, repeats it. “You can bring the cat, too. I just want you to come home with me.”
It isn’t the first time he’s said this, but somehow, hundreds of miles between them and a dirty bus driving away without Eames means a hell of a lot more.
*
Arthur is sick. He is walking to Eames’s house. He is carrying a bag of his clothes from the car to the building. He takes a step and the ground tilts.
Or maybe he tilts.
“Eames,” he breathes, and the forger drops the box he’s holding, takes the stairs two at a time and cups Arthur’s face in his hands, thumbs stroking over his cheeks. “Arthur,” he whispers, long syllables, jaw tight, eyes green. Blue. A little bit of grey, maybe. “Look at me, darling,” he coaxes, one hand moving to the small of his back, just enough pressure to keep Arthur from falling. “We’re going to go inside and we’re going to lie down, yeah? It’s been a long day. I’m tired, aren’t you, love?”
Arthur nods. Eames leans in, and for a moment he thinks the forger will kiss him. He doesn’t. He presses his forehead against Arthur’s, whispers another darling, and leads him in.
The ground is still tilting. Maybe in a good way, this time.
*
Eames sleeps next to him, but they do not sleep together.
/ / “Any action (A) of the human heart must trigger an equal and opposite reaction (A1).”
It’s a Wednesday when Arthur starts chemo.
It’s cold out. It is cold out and he is wearing a coat, and his hands are in his pockets and Eames keeps bumping shoulders with him. He is smoking a cigar, like he always does, and smiling wickedly at the nurse who greets them at the front desk.
“Please put that out. There’s no smoking in the hospital,” she says.
“Anything for you, love.” He blows out a cloud of smoke and does as told, and Arthur stares helplessly ahead. “How long will this take? I want to get him home soon. Not feeling well, you see.”
Arthur doesn’t listen to them. He stares at the cream-colored walls and knows one day he will be forced to call this place home. Cancer will rot him, drag him down to the bottom of the sea and only then will he be home. Eames circles him like a shark and his breath smells like nothing at all and he grabs Arthur’s hand and leads him down the hallway. And Arthur is sinking very fast, and he has realized belatedly that he cannot swim.
*
He loses his hair on a Monday.
He is petting Grendel, and Eames is petting him, and he is as content as the feline in his lap and Eames shifts just the slightest bit and says darling, it’s time and Arthur tries very hard not to cry at the sight.
Eames does not smoke. He works quickly, words tumbling from his lips, and when he’s done, he smiles, a Cheshire cat smile, and they go to bed.
Eames sleeps next to him, and this time, they sleep together.
/ / “The ultimate evil is that Time is perpetual perishing, and being actual involves elimination.”
Arthur is twenty-six dying today.
/ / “Tedium is the worst pain.”
He goes to chemo three times a week. Sometimes, Eames stays the whole time.
Mostly, he doesn’t.
*
Arthur cooks dinner every Thursday.
Today, he is making pasta ricotta. Eames is sitting on the counter, staring. Grendel is winding his way around Arthur’s ankles, meowing, and he reaches down to pet him.
“Did you mean what you said? About dreaming?” Eames asks. He smokes, passes Arthur the salt.
“That it’s shit?” Arthur stares down into his boiling pasta, feels the heat of it against his face. Eames hops down, comes up behind him and mouths against his neck. Arthur swallows. “Yes, I meant it.”
“I meant what I said, too,” Eames murmurs, setting his cigar down and sliding his hands up the front of Arthur’s shirt. He trembles, and Eames sighs against his collarbone. “You’re the only thing I give a shit about and I don’t even know why.”
Arthur doesn’t know why either, and when Eames nibbles at the nape of his neck, he doesn’t really need to.
*
On the first day of spring, Arthur sees Cobb. He visits with the children, letting Philippa take his hand and show him to her room. She is gentle and beautiful and so much like Mal that, for a moment, Arthur forgets she’s gone.
“Daddy told me you were sick,” she whispers. “So I drew you this picture.”
It’s horrible. Arthur can’t even really tell what it is until she explains. “It’s you and me and Mommy, because we were all best friends, I think, and if she’s an angel, she’ll watch over you. That’s what Daddy says.”
*
Philippa’s picture is framed next to his bed by the time he thinks of Mal. He thinks of how she jumped, how she must have been terrified, how she expected to wake up and never did. And he feels sick, and he can’t move, and Eames is next to him, smoking, and Grendel is purring between the both of them and he can’t even jump. The most fucked-up form of gravity is going to pull him and tug him until he crashes and everything will be gone, just like that.
“Who will take care of my cat?” He asks, and Eames says ssh, sleep, and he does.
/ / “The dragon tipped up his great tusked head, stretched his neck, sighed fire.”
Eames goes to Venice.
He leaves in the morning for no real reason other than to get away for a while, and that’s just how Eames is. It’s how he’ll always be, and Arthur can’t be mad at that.
He gets out of bed, makes breakfast for two, curls up on the couch with Grendel and watches the news. There is an earthquake in California. He is three thousand miles away but he can still feel the aftershocks.
*
Eames isn’t gone long.
He comes back with cat food, and Grendel greets him happily, curls up at his feet and purrs.
“I missed you,” Arthur says, for no real reason, and the words feel foreign against his tongue. Eames pulls him in close, murmurs something against his lips and Arthur can taste his cigar. Buster Keaton is on the television, jumping gracefully across The General and Arthur has never been happier.
*
Ariadne comes by in October. It isn’t too chilly, but Arthur has a jacket on anyway. Eames insisted. Ariadne bums a cigar off of him, and it looks much too bulky for her thin fingers, but she handles it with grace, somehow.
She is young, but not much younger than he is. She will grow old with a man she loves. Maybe she will have children. She will build cities and a life, and she will be so very happy. And it makes Arthur terribly sad to be the only one of them who will know what it’s like to die young.
“We went under not long ago,” she says, staring out at the sidewalk, a smoke serpentine around her words. “I built you something, in that dream. I don’t know what it was, but it was beautiful. I think you would have liked it Arthur.”
Grendel purrs in the doorway, and Arthur wants to cry.
*
He gets better. It’s slow, painfully slow, like dancing across the tip of a needle, but he gets better.
On Thursday, he cooks dinner.
/ / “Except in the life of a hero, the whole world is meaningless. The hero sees values beyond what's possible. That's the nature of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile.”
“I’m in remission,” Arthur says. He is home with Eames and they are eating dinner that neither of them cooked. It does not taste good, but they eat it anyway. Eames looks over at him, and there is something very young in his eyes when he does so. There is something so very boyish and innocent and beautiful that Arthur wants to snatch the moment up and keep it tucked away for no one else but himself.
“Bloody hell. Are you sure?” Eames puts his fork down and at Arthur’s nod, things move very quickly, a somersault of hands and lips and Arthur just lets it happen, because there is a cat at their legs that he’s had for six years, and dinner on the table that neither of them cooked, and Eames slides a hand up Arthur’s shirt and laughs a wicked laugh until they’re just breathing.
Eames pulls out a cigar, slides another across the table and Arthur lights it, lets the fog of the day wind around his mouth until Eames pulls him forward.
“Such is the end of the flicker of time,” Arthur murmurs.
Eames smiles, Cheshire cat smile, and smokes.
fin.
A/N: I'm putting a few notes for this piece because I feel it's necessary. The quotes and the cat's name are from the novel Grendel by John Gardner, which is one of my favorites for many reasons. I highly recommend it. Also, this piece is lovingly dedicated to both fakebody and knowmydark who motivated me to keep writing this troublesome little piece whether they knew it or not. Thank you.
Eames didn’t expect Arthur to have a cat. He is pure white with giant blue eyes and looks as if he came straight out of a cat food commercial. And he is nice, for the most part, nuzzling against Eames’s leg and meowing up a storm. But there is something fiercely protective about him, and he is purring quietly at Arthur’s side just moments afterward.
Eames is here on business, he tells himself. He is here to tell Arthur that he is going to Venice for the next two months and that no he could not have told him this over the phone and no he will not miss him. This is the kind of thing that business partners should do face-to-face, to establish a friendlier working environment and darling, I think your cat likes me.
“He doesn’t,” Arthur deadpans, the feline curled up in his lap. “He leads everyone on. He will pretend to like you so you’ll give him food and pet him. I think he kind of hates you, actually.”
Eames frowns, and the cat peers up at him and purrs in the most innocent of ways, and it’s actually quite unsettling. “What’s the little bugger’s name, anyway?” He asks, and he expects it to be something sweet or French, maybe.
“Grendel,” Arthur says casually.
Eames does not go to Venice.
*
He shows up on Arthur’s doorstep two weeks later with a grocery bag full of different types of cat food and toys.
“I thought you were in Venice,” Arthur mutters, taking the grocery bag and setting it on the counter. “Grendel isn’t going to like you for this, by the way. He’s just using you.”
“He and I respect each other. We’ve got a thing now.” Eames winks at the cat, who is far too busy stretching out along the cabinet in an attempt to claim his food. Eames opens a can experimentally. Grendel meows.
“Where’s the food dish?”
Arthur scowls. “You two don’t have a thing and it’s in the living room. Bastard.”
“Your hospitality towards guests is very endearing, Arthur.” Eames leans back against the counter, folds his arms across his chest. “Cobb tells me you’re taking some time off from the job.”
Arthur squats down next to the cat, strokes over his head. “Remind me to never tell Cobb of my personal agenda.”
Eames chuckles and pulls out a cigar. “What exactly is on this agenda of yours that’s preventing you from work? Taking a vacation? Getting hitched? Hopefully nothing boring, or I’ll be very disappointed.”
“It’s very boring. Textbook dull, actually. I’m going to see the largest collection of stamps.”
“Send me a postcard, then,” Eames says, smoke tumbling from his lips. Arthur’s heart skips a beat.
It’s a beat too many.
*
Arthur isn’t really sure what makes Eames come over. But Eames claims he just has this thing. “I’m going to be honest with you, I can’t really keep myself away. I think of the Fischer job and that suit you wore and I’m… I’m really going to get all hot and bothered just thinking about it.”
Arthur glares at him.
“Actually, Cobb told me you had a cat. I didn’t believe him. It’s really as simple as that.”
It’s never that simple with Eames, but Arthur doesn’t ask anything more.
*
Eames shows up the next day. He does not say hello to Grendel or Arthur. It’s raining outside and Eames is getting soaked and Arthur has tried to show him in several times but the forger doesn’t budge.
“How bad is it?” He keeps asking, and Arthur won’t answer him and Eames is yelling now. “I’m going to leave,” Eames shouts over the storm, and it feels like there’s a mile of wind and rain between them. “And I’m going to come back tomorrow and we’re going to bloody talk about this, you complete fool.”
Arthur stands outside in the rain for a very long time. Grendel meows in the doorway.
*
Eames comes back, as promised.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Just because we work together doesn’t mean you’re entitled to know.” Now that Eames looks, really looks, he can see that Arthur is not well. He could have easily blamed it on his workload last week. It’s funny how things don’t really change at all until you know something’s different.
Arthur shows Eames in. He sits down at the kitchen table, takes a sip of the beer Arthur offers. This is the kind of thing you drink beer over, he thinks. Like friends do, but he and Eames could hardly be considered friends. He doesn’t even really know what they are, and that’s what makes this harder. Or easier, maybe.
“Cobb had no right to tell you,” Arthur finally says, and Eames shakes his head. “He bloody well did.”
Arthur really wants to drink. He’s a lightweight - it wouldn’t take much to do him in. But that seems a bit too ordinary, and Arthur isn’t one for clichés.
“You can just spring it on me, you know. How long’ve you got? A year? Two?” Eames drinks. He drinks a lot. And Arthur doesn’t worry because it’s okay to be drunk right now.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll see forty.”
And Eames pauses, because Arthur’s always seemed a bit older to him, and hearing that makes him realize that Arthur is still very young. “How old are you, love?”
Arthur takes a sip of his beer. Grendel ends up on his lap and purrs, rubs his head against Arthur’s stomach. “I’m twenty-five, Mr. Eames.”
Eames stares for a very long time, takes another cautious sip of his beer, and quite honestly wants to cry right then and there, because it really isn’t fair at all.
/ / “For all I knew he might be telling me gibberish on purpose. I sat down. Let him babble.”
“I just think it’s all kind of gone to shit,” Arthur says. “Dreaming, you know? It’s not worth it anymore.” He is drunk. I am drunk, he thinks, and takes another sip of his beer. Eames is sitting next to him. They are at a bar in upstate New York. They are both drunk. Eames chugs a shot, asks for another.
"Everything is shit. Except you, love."
And Arthur isn’t really sure what that means, but they are drunk. It doesn’t really have to make much sense, anyway.
/ / "Bulls do such things, though they don't even know that the calves they defend are theirs."
It snows.
Arthur comes down with the flu. Except it’s not just the flu, because when your body is being eaten away by cancer, it’s never just the flu. He is awfully, terribly sick. He sleeps through eight phone calls. He falls in and out of sleep and wakes up every time staring at something new by the bed. First, a glass of water. Then, toast. After that, there’s a change of clothes, and someone helps him up, arm strong around his waist and he moves without thinking.
“Let’s get you warmed up, darling,” and Arthur doesn’t understand how Eames got here. “Okay,” he mumbles, only standing because Eames has him held against his chest, very carefully tugging off his shirt, his pants, turning on the water and coaxing him into the bathtub.
“You should come home with me,” Eames says quietly. He is watching Arthur. He is also smoking a cigar. It is a high-class, expensive cigar, and Arthur watches the smoke curl from Eames’s mouth like he’s a Cheshire cat. “You can even bring that lousy feline of yours.”
Arthur does not answer him. He closes his eyes and pretends it’s his own breath curling from Eames’s lips, because he’s positive that his mouth would taste wonderful right now.
*
Eames leaves in the morning. He leaves no trace that he was ever there and Arthur misses him deeply and painfully, like a phantom limb.
*
Arthur sleeps. He dreams of the smoke from Eames’s mouth, recreates the curl of it in his own mind, imagines his mouth crushed against the forger’s, vividly constructs the way they’d move so fluidly, like bathwater. He imagines Eames holding him upright, whispering a quiet darling and believes that this is as close to love he will ever get.
He’s okay with that.
/ / “I was younger then. Still playing cat and mouse with the universe.”
Eames calls him from a payphone in Ohio. Arthur hasn’t heard from him in three months. And twelve days, if he’s counting. He’s not.
“I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” Eames mumbles. Arthur can hear the sound of a bus in the background. He wants to ask Eames if he’s moving further away or coming back.
“Then come see,” Arthur says, bitterly, because it’s not up to Eames to determine how these things play out anymore. It isn’t fair.
Eames doesn’t speak, and Arthur can still hear the bus, the tires, the squeak of the door, the rattle of change, and he imagines Eames sitting down next to a stranger and charming her, the curl of smoke around his lips.
“Cobb tells me you want to start working again. You shouldn’t. You should-“
“I should what? Sit around on the fucking floor and cry my eyes out over ice cream and Oprah? Fuck you, Eames. You just left.”
The bus starts moving, engine turning over, wheels whirring. The line goes quiet and Arthur wonders if Eames has hung up.
“You should come home with me,” Eames whispers, repeats it. “You can bring the cat, too. I just want you to come home with me.”
It isn’t the first time he’s said this, but somehow, hundreds of miles between them and a dirty bus driving away without Eames means a hell of a lot more.
*
Arthur is sick. He is walking to Eames’s house. He is carrying a bag of his clothes from the car to the building. He takes a step and the ground tilts.
Or maybe he tilts.
“Eames,” he breathes, and the forger drops the box he’s holding, takes the stairs two at a time and cups Arthur’s face in his hands, thumbs stroking over his cheeks. “Arthur,” he whispers, long syllables, jaw tight, eyes green. Blue. A little bit of grey, maybe. “Look at me, darling,” he coaxes, one hand moving to the small of his back, just enough pressure to keep Arthur from falling. “We’re going to go inside and we’re going to lie down, yeah? It’s been a long day. I’m tired, aren’t you, love?”
Arthur nods. Eames leans in, and for a moment he thinks the forger will kiss him. He doesn’t. He presses his forehead against Arthur’s, whispers another darling, and leads him in.
The ground is still tilting. Maybe in a good way, this time.
*
Eames sleeps next to him, but they do not sleep together.
/ / “Any action (A) of the human heart must trigger an equal and opposite reaction (A1).”
It’s a Wednesday when Arthur starts chemo.
It’s cold out. It is cold out and he is wearing a coat, and his hands are in his pockets and Eames keeps bumping shoulders with him. He is smoking a cigar, like he always does, and smiling wickedly at the nurse who greets them at the front desk.
“Please put that out. There’s no smoking in the hospital,” she says.
“Anything for you, love.” He blows out a cloud of smoke and does as told, and Arthur stares helplessly ahead. “How long will this take? I want to get him home soon. Not feeling well, you see.”
Arthur doesn’t listen to them. He stares at the cream-colored walls and knows one day he will be forced to call this place home. Cancer will rot him, drag him down to the bottom of the sea and only then will he be home. Eames circles him like a shark and his breath smells like nothing at all and he grabs Arthur’s hand and leads him down the hallway. And Arthur is sinking very fast, and he has realized belatedly that he cannot swim.
*
He loses his hair on a Monday.
He is petting Grendel, and Eames is petting him, and he is as content as the feline in his lap and Eames shifts just the slightest bit and says darling, it’s time and Arthur tries very hard not to cry at the sight.
Eames does not smoke. He works quickly, words tumbling from his lips, and when he’s done, he smiles, a Cheshire cat smile, and they go to bed.
Eames sleeps next to him, and this time, they sleep together.
/ / “The ultimate evil is that Time is perpetual perishing, and being actual involves elimination.”
Arthur is twenty-six dying today.
/ / “Tedium is the worst pain.”
He goes to chemo three times a week. Sometimes, Eames stays the whole time.
Mostly, he doesn’t.
*
Arthur cooks dinner every Thursday.
Today, he is making pasta ricotta. Eames is sitting on the counter, staring. Grendel is winding his way around Arthur’s ankles, meowing, and he reaches down to pet him.
“Did you mean what you said? About dreaming?” Eames asks. He smokes, passes Arthur the salt.
“That it’s shit?” Arthur stares down into his boiling pasta, feels the heat of it against his face. Eames hops down, comes up behind him and mouths against his neck. Arthur swallows. “Yes, I meant it.”
“I meant what I said, too,” Eames murmurs, setting his cigar down and sliding his hands up the front of Arthur’s shirt. He trembles, and Eames sighs against his collarbone. “You’re the only thing I give a shit about and I don’t even know why.”
Arthur doesn’t know why either, and when Eames nibbles at the nape of his neck, he doesn’t really need to.
*
On the first day of spring, Arthur sees Cobb. He visits with the children, letting Philippa take his hand and show him to her room. She is gentle and beautiful and so much like Mal that, for a moment, Arthur forgets she’s gone.
“Daddy told me you were sick,” she whispers. “So I drew you this picture.”
It’s horrible. Arthur can’t even really tell what it is until she explains. “It’s you and me and Mommy, because we were all best friends, I think, and if she’s an angel, she’ll watch over you. That’s what Daddy says.”
*
Philippa’s picture is framed next to his bed by the time he thinks of Mal. He thinks of how she jumped, how she must have been terrified, how she expected to wake up and never did. And he feels sick, and he can’t move, and Eames is next to him, smoking, and Grendel is purring between the both of them and he can’t even jump. The most fucked-up form of gravity is going to pull him and tug him until he crashes and everything will be gone, just like that.
“Who will take care of my cat?” He asks, and Eames says ssh, sleep, and he does.
/ / “The dragon tipped up his great tusked head, stretched his neck, sighed fire.”
Eames goes to Venice.
He leaves in the morning for no real reason other than to get away for a while, and that’s just how Eames is. It’s how he’ll always be, and Arthur can’t be mad at that.
He gets out of bed, makes breakfast for two, curls up on the couch with Grendel and watches the news. There is an earthquake in California. He is three thousand miles away but he can still feel the aftershocks.
*
Eames isn’t gone long.
He comes back with cat food, and Grendel greets him happily, curls up at his feet and purrs.
“I missed you,” Arthur says, for no real reason, and the words feel foreign against his tongue. Eames pulls him in close, murmurs something against his lips and Arthur can taste his cigar. Buster Keaton is on the television, jumping gracefully across The General and Arthur has never been happier.
*
Ariadne comes by in October. It isn’t too chilly, but Arthur has a jacket on anyway. Eames insisted. Ariadne bums a cigar off of him, and it looks much too bulky for her thin fingers, but she handles it with grace, somehow.
She is young, but not much younger than he is. She will grow old with a man she loves. Maybe she will have children. She will build cities and a life, and she will be so very happy. And it makes Arthur terribly sad to be the only one of them who will know what it’s like to die young.
“We went under not long ago,” she says, staring out at the sidewalk, a smoke serpentine around her words. “I built you something, in that dream. I don’t know what it was, but it was beautiful. I think you would have liked it Arthur.”
Grendel purrs in the doorway, and Arthur wants to cry.
*
He gets better. It’s slow, painfully slow, like dancing across the tip of a needle, but he gets better.
On Thursday, he cooks dinner.
/ / “Except in the life of a hero, the whole world is meaningless. The hero sees values beyond what's possible. That's the nature of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile.”
“I’m in remission,” Arthur says. He is home with Eames and they are eating dinner that neither of them cooked. It does not taste good, but they eat it anyway. Eames looks over at him, and there is something very young in his eyes when he does so. There is something so very boyish and innocent and beautiful that Arthur wants to snatch the moment up and keep it tucked away for no one else but himself.
“Bloody hell. Are you sure?” Eames puts his fork down and at Arthur’s nod, things move very quickly, a somersault of hands and lips and Arthur just lets it happen, because there is a cat at their legs that he’s had for six years, and dinner on the table that neither of them cooked, and Eames slides a hand up Arthur’s shirt and laughs a wicked laugh until they’re just breathing.
Eames pulls out a cigar, slides another across the table and Arthur lights it, lets the fog of the day wind around his mouth until Eames pulls him forward.
“Such is the end of the flicker of time,” Arthur murmurs.
Eames smiles, Cheshire cat smile, and smokes.
fin.
A/N: I'm putting a few notes for this piece because I feel it's necessary. The quotes and the cat's name are from the novel Grendel by John Gardner, which is one of my favorites for many reasons. I highly recommend it. Also, this piece is lovingly dedicated to both fakebody and knowmydark who motivated me to keep writing this troublesome little piece whether they knew it or not. Thank you.