[December 25th] can’t hurry love
can’t hurry love
PG-13 - 4903 Words
Author : liketheroad | Artist : bluestraggler
Summary : Mal and Dom invite Arthur and Eames over for Christmas. Spoiler: IT’S A TRAP.
Arthur is halfway up Mal and Dom’s front steps when he hears a low murmur followed by a sudden riot of laughter coming from inside.
He stops in his tracks, ignoring the snow blanketing his hair and shoulders, and puts a warning hand against Dom’s chest, leaning in to hiss accusingly, “Is this a trap? Is that Eames making Mal laugh inside?”
Dom tries to widen his eyes innocently, but he fails miserably in the attempt.
Arthur shoves Dom a little, out of spite, and then backs off, glaring at Dom and the heavens in turns.
“Why,” he grits out with difficulty, “would you think this would be a good idea? Do you remember what I said after that last job? How I said if I never saw Eames again it would be too soon? Was there something unclear about that statement?”
Dom shrugs, getting the innocent thing down-pat this time. “You didn’t mean it.”
Arthur clenches his fists, resisting the urge to curse the heavens in futility.
“I’m pretty sure I did,” he disagrees when he can form words again.
Dom just smiles.
“No, you didn’t.”
---
Christmas at Mal and Dom’s wasn’t supposed to be a Thing. They’re married now, sure, but Arthur still sees as much of them as he ever did. He still spends half his nights sleeping on their couch when he’s in the city, still comes for movie nights on Fridays and Scrabble nights on Tuesdays. He still makes the coffee while Mal makes the breakfast and Dom wanders around uselessly until he’s had some of both. He’s still the one they call whenever they need anything, and they’re still the ones he calls whenever he misses being around people who aren’t paying him or working for him. They’re still his best and only friends, and he likes it that way.
So Christmas was just supposed to be the three of them, lots of food and even more wine. Maybe some snow if they were lucky, and some warm words over the electric fire.
It was just supposed to be the three of them, indulging in their Judeo-Christian rituals and eating too much stuffing.
It was just supposed to be Arthur, Mal, and Dom.
Not Arthur, Mal, Dom, and Eames who is quite possibly the worst - and most certainly the most infuriating - person Arthur has ever met.
Arthur is not used to having his plans spiral so extraordinarily out of control.
---
Arthur and Dom step inside the parlour, and Mal jumps up to hug and kiss Arthur hello. He lets her, because she’s Mal, and he’ll never turn down her kisses.
He frowns at her as best he can, but he can’t quite even keep that up when she grins at him, presenting Eames like a prize to be won, all pomp and flourish.
Arthur resists the urge to roll his eyes when Eames says, “Hello, darling,” like he has any right to say those words, although Arthur knows he damns himself with his silence, his lack of protest, yet again.
They shake hands, and Eames leers in a way that almost comes off as endearingly affectionate, rather than simply over-the-top and disingenuous.
Arthur hates Eames most of all when he makes Arthur believe in him.
---
Arthur escapes Eames as soon as possible, putting up with an hour of watching Eames and Mal regale each other with increasingly implausible anecdotes and taunts before retreating outside with Dom.
“I want you to know that I think it’s appallingly heteronormative of you to try and pair me off just because you’ve now paired off,” Arthur informs Dom over cognacs on the back deck. It’s a little chilly, but they’re out of the wind, and the brandy is keeping them warm.
Dom takes a long time to respond, smirking slightly and swirling his drink in his glass.
Eventually he asks, “I don’t get any points against heternormativity for trying to give you away to Eames?”
Arthur rolls his eyes, huffing. “No, you don’t. Especially not when you use phrases like “give me away,” like I’m some kind of chattel.”
Dom laughs, a little softer than his earlier smirk might have allowed. “You’re not my chattel, Arthur.”
Arthur takes a sip of his drink and glares into the distance. “I’m not your anything, as it turns out.”
Dom sighs, putting his hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “That’s not true. You’re my best friend.”
“Well if this is what it gets me, if Eames is what it gets me, then maybe I don’t want your friendship.”
Dom just squeezes his shoulder, and Arthur leans into his touch, just a little. It’s all the apology Dom’s going to get, but that’s fine. He’s not going to ask Arthur for more.
---
Because he’s staying at least until after New Year’s, Mal insists Arthur take the spare room instead of camping out on the couch like he normally does.
He has to give her a very whithering look to stave off her suggestions that he and Eames share.
Let Eames have the couch. Arthur hopes he enjoys the inevitable backache.
---
Mal makes Arthur go shopping with her. He protests - braving holiday crowds less than a week before Christmas isn’t exactly his idea of a good time - but it’s a chance to get out of the house, get away from Eames, so Arthur doesn’t protest too hard.
Not that it would have mattered to Mal, either way.
He white-knuckles it through her driving, and then trails after her for hours, carrying more and more bags and offering her thoughtful, attentive input on the series of gifts she forces him to help her pick out for Dom.
“I don’t know why you’re asking me,” he says for the hundredth time.
The current dilemma is over a pair of ties. One is gun metal and the other is a more standard ivory grey.
“You have better taste than me,” she responds airily, holding up the gun metal tie against Arthur’s neck, frowning thoughtfully.
“We both know that’s not true,” Arthur demurs.
She smiles at him patiently. “Well you know Dom’s taste better, at least.”
Arthur holds in a sigh. They both know that isn’t true, either.
“I don’t know him better than you, Mal. I never did. I knew him for almost a decade before you two even met, and in the first ten seconds of meeting him, you already knew him better.”
“Is that what it was like when you first met Eames?” Mal asks, and Arthur curses himself for not realizing where this conversation was going earlier. He should know better, by now, than to think Mal has ever been insecure about her place in Dom’s life, in his heart. No one, not even Arthur, has ever offered her a challenge in that respect.
“Yes,” he answers, because it’s Mal, and she’d know if he was lying, anyway.
It had been terrifying. To look into a stranger’s eyes and see your whole life, every secret, every desire, played back to you in theirs.
He hasn’t quite shaken that first blind moment of fear, not even now, almost three years later.
“If you feel what I felt, if you love him as I love Dom, then why do you run from him, Arthur? Why do you run from yourself?”
Arthur sighs, and takes the gun metal tie out of her hands.
“Pick this one, it’ll bring out his eyes.”
Mal sighs, too, and says, “That’s no reason.”
Arthur smiles at her. “It’s reason enough.”
---
“Remind me, how did you meet Dominic?”
“He was my French tutor,” Arthur answers reluctantly, staring out the window like it’s an escape.
Mal has been playing Christmas music nonstop for days. Right now its the Vince Guaraldi trio from Peanuts. It makes Arthur feel like he’s trapped in a Christmas special.
Eames is standing too close beside him, but he has the window as an excuse, sharing the lovely view with Arthur. Never mind that Eames gave up the pretence of needing any excuse to stand next to Arthur long ago.
“Ah, that’s right. Charming. And what were you doing with a French tutor?”
Arthur closes his eyes. He had been 16, and he’d never been bad at anything he set his mind to, not in his whole life. That is, not until his mother decided it was time for him to have language lessons, training for hobnobbing with foreign diplomats and dropping references to French poets and philosophers at cocktail parties. That was the life she was preparing him for, and until Arthur discovered that learning French was bafflingly, infuriatingly out of his depth, he’d never thought twice about her plan for him.
Greatness hadn’t seemed so bad to a 16-year-old, and a few years of military service followed up with an Ivy League education and a respectable career in law all dovetailing into an impressive political career had been good enough for the rest of his brothers. So why not Arthur, too?
But then he’d met Dom, who was supposed to teach him French but had taught him about desire instead. Dom, who taught Arthur what it meant - what it really meant, to want things. Not just for his family, or because it was expected, but just for himself, to please himself and for no other reason.
When Arthur was 16 Dom gave him his first real taste of desire, and then, years later, Dom took Arthur into his first dream, too, and from there he showed Arthur there was no limit to the things they could accomplish together.
It doesn’t matter that Dom is an academic, now, or that Arthur is a criminal. They still retain the bond they first made, all those summers ago, when Arthur closed his eyes and Dom kissed him, full on the mouth, just as Arthur’s tongue struggled to form the slippery sounds needed to ask Dom about the weather in French.
“When did you finally realize you weren’t in love with Dom? When he met Mal, or when you met me?” Eames asks matter-of-factly, breaking Arthur out of his reverie.
“When he met Mal,” Arthur answers honestly, looking away to avoid seeing the reaction on Eames’ face. “He met her and I knew what he felt for her was nothing like what I felt for him, that my feelings were just an imitation of love, a shade.”
He shrugs, still looking away from Eames as he says, “Meeting you only confirmed what I already knew. That what I felt for Dom was nothing compared to what real love would taste like, feel like. Even seeing it with Mal and Dom, nothing could have prepared me for the way falling in love would burn the very core of me, leaving nothing behind.”
“You shouldn’t put me on quite so high a pedestal darling,” Eames chides, sounding deceptively genuine in his sadness.
Arthur steps away from him, face tense, shoulders ramrod straight. “Yeah, well, I didn’t mean it as a compliment, anyway.”
Eames laughs, sadder still. “No, I’m sure you didn’t.”
Arthur looks at him, then, for one long, searching moment, and then he gives up, stops waiting for Eames to look back at him, to see him.
Original Size
He walks away, and Eames doesn’t try to follow him. Furious at himself for his honesty and furious at Eames for drawing it out of him so effortlessly, Arthur spends the rest of his evening locked up in the spare room, making phone calls and booking flights out of the country he won’t actually take.
---
They play charades.
Predictably, Eames is amazing at it.
Arthur is hopeless, but every time he tries to quit his attempts are drowned out by loud protests and the strategic refilling of his drink.
“You have to give yourself over to it, Arthur. Become the role. The play is the thing!” Eames shouts, waving his arms theatrically, making Mal laugh and bury her face into Dom’s shoulder.
Arthur wishes he could mean it when he says that he hates every single one of them.
But they all know full well that the very opposite is true.
Even - especially - Eames.
Arthur takes a deep breath, and holds up his finger.
Eames grins, and says, “One word!”
The game continues.
---
Arthur is hiding in the wine cellar when Eames finds him.
“What are you doing down here, darling?” Eames asks, sounding exasperated, fond.
“It’s not safe up there,” Arthur responds cryptically, glancing up at the ceiling nervously.
Eames huffs an incredulous laugh. “Why not?”
Arthur crosses his arms, shoulders hunching protectively. “Mal’s booby-trapping every doorway.”
Eames just raises his eyebrows and mouths, “Booby-trapping?”
Arthur sighs. “She’s putting mistletoe up everywhere. I think she honestly believes that if we happen to walk under one together we’ll be positively overcome with holiday spirit and give ourselves up to our supposedly true and miraculous love.”
Arthur says all this as disdainfully as he can manage - which is pretty disdainfully - but all his efforts are wasted, anyway, when Eames gets a distant, possibly hurt look in his eye and murmurs, “Do you put up with this for them, or for me? I honestly don’t know which it is, Arthur. I wish I did, but I don’t.”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it bloody matters. If you’re only staying for them, then I need to go. I’m not your consolation prize, Arthur.”
Arthur opens his mouth to respond, but Eames is already pushing angrily past him and up the stairs, leaving Arthur standing alone in a damp wine cellar, his mouth hanging open, hands empty.
---
Mal and Eames are decorating the house, and Dom and Arthur are washing dishes. Mal’s been baking all day, so there are a lot of them.
“What is it, Arthur?” Dom asks, handing him a plate to dry.
Arthur takes it warily. He should have known as soon as Dom asked him to help clean up that it was just an excuse for staging another round of Dom giving him the third degree.
“What is what?” he stalls, drying the plate meticulously and reaching up to put it away.
“What’s making you dig your heels in like this? I know it’s not fear, not just that, anyway. And it’s not just stubbornness, either, as much as I’d believe you were capable of it. You love him, he loves you. What’s so complicated about it?”
Arthur watches Dom scrub a particularly caked on muffin pan and tries to think of an answer that will get him out of this conversation as quickly as possible.
He affects a significant, longing look, but Dom just takes one look at Arthur and scoffs, shaking his head, rolling his eyes.
“The me thing gets less funny every time, Arthur,” Dom notes, really putting his back into scrubbing that pan.
“Maybe I’m not trying to be funny,” Arthur says gruffly.
Dom just shakes his head. “I get that you thought you knew what love was, and you liked it, because your feelings for me were manageable, constrained. I get that meeting Eames, loving him, so much, so fast, shook you. But that was years ago, Arthur. Haven’t you learned to trust yourself yet? Trust Eames?”
Now it’s Arthur who scoffs.
“Trust Eames? There’s a good idea.”
“Your fondness for sarcasm has never been your most attractive quality, Arthur.”
“Good thing I don’t have to care about what you find attractive, then,” Arthur mutters, drying the muffin pan sulkily.
“Why don’t you trust Eames?” Dom asks, patiently guiding the conversation back on course.
Arthur sighs. “Why should I? He’s a criminal. He’s an unreliable, dastardly, criminal. You should applaud me for preserving a healthy dose of caution with regards to Eames.”
“Dastardly? Who talks like that?” Dom shakes his head. “You’re a criminal too, Arthur.”
Arthur purses his lips unhappily. “A much more reliable one.”
Dom laughs. “I’ll grant you you’re certainly the most upstanding criminal I’ve ever met, how about that?”
Arthur nods, accepting these terms on a trial basis.
Dom smiles thinly. “So this is the part where you tell me why you don’t trust Eames.”
Arthur looks skyward for a moment, hoping for deliverance, and then turns back down to look at Dom when it doesn’t come.
“He double-crossed me, you know that, right? At the last job? The one I barely got home from? He sold me out to the mark, and they had me locked in a linen closet for hours.”
“Until?” Dom asks pointedly, doing outrageous things with his eyebrows. It’s like he’s trying to raise them and squint all at once.
“Until Eames shot up the place and got me, yes, fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that he sold me out in the first place!”
“And probably doubled your share.”
“Tripled. But it doesn’t matter. He still conned me. He still used me as a fucking prop and he probably never hesitated for a second doing it.”
“Did it surprise you?”
“When my extractor revealed my location to our last mark and almost got me killed? Yeah, I admit, it surprised me. But that’s the last time I put my faith in Eames and have it--”
“No, Arthur, I didn’t mean the fact that he sold you out. I meant the fact that he came and rescued you after. Did it surprise you?”
“No.”
Arthur answers before he can even think about it, but once he does, the answer stays the same. He hadn’t been surprised, not for a second. A little annoyed it had taken so long, maybe, but not surprised.
Dom smiles, and hands him a new plate to dry.
“Then that’s all you need to know.”
---
On Christmas Eve, Mal goes all out, unveiling platters of sugar cookies and shortbread, cranberry pudding, chocolate-covered cashews and candied pecans.
They order Chinese food, washing it down beer and before moving on to cherry brandy with dessert.
Eames and Mal start to sing carols when they’re all about four brandies deep, laughing when they mix up words and swaying back and forth, arms wrapped around each other’s waists.
Arthur keeps the warm, fond expression carefully off his face as he watches them.
---
Eames wakes Arthur up on Christmas morning.
Arthur rubs at his face and blinks at Eames, grinning at him softly from the foot of Arthur’s bed.
“What are you doing here?”
“Happy Christmas,” Eames responds warmly, ignoring the question.
Arthur blinks more pointedly. “I’m not even - I barely celebrate. My mother was Jewish, you know.”
“I know,” Eames assures him, his voice still soft and delicate around the edges, patient, careful.
No one ever made Arthur feel like he needed to be treated with care until he met Eames. No one ever made him feel like he needed, or was worth, the effort.
“Happy Christmas anyway,” Eames repeats, touching Arthur’s leg over the covers, squeezing reassuringly.
Arthur sighs, and lets himself smile.
“Happy Christmas, Eames.”
----
They go downstairs together, and Mal and Dom are already sitting by the tree, still in their pajamas.
Dom is clutching onto his snowflake-covered coffee mug for dear life. Arthur wonders if it would be easier to try to steal Dom’s coffee or to try and get Eames to bring him his own.
He’s still debating this when Mal jumps up to wish him a merry Christmas and hug him. He hugs her back, laughing, and by the time she lets go, Eames has gone away and returned with two mugs of steaming coffee.
“Are those both for me?” Arthur asks, risking a wide, genuine grin.
Eames just shakes his head, smiling faintly. “Don’t be greedy, Arthur. One for me, one for you.” He hands Arthur one of the cups, and Arthur makes sure their fingers brush, pressing his thumb over Eames’ wrist before withdrawing.
They crowd in on the couch with Dom and Mal, and spend the morning drinking coffee and opening presents. Eames stays fixed to Arthur’s side, rarely straying more than a foot away, and Arthur lets himself to lean into it, into Eames, thinking that, at least on Christmas, they should both be allowed to have what they want.
---
It starts snowing while the turkey still has hours to cook, and Mal insists on bundling them all up and attempting to build a snowman outside.
Her joy is infectious, and for once Arthur doesn’t try to pretend he isn’t enjoying himself. He and Dom murmur building strategies and design configurations in mock seriousness while Eames and Mal have a haphazard snow fight around them.
Arthur catches a stray snowball in the side, but Mal hides behind Eames, laughing and shouting that Arthur can’t kill her on her favorite holiday, so he lets the offense go with a short and insincere glare before grinning and laughing with her.
They eventually get down to the actual business of making a snowman, although it turns into a snow family, and Arthur doesn’t even realize what Mal is trying to tell him until Dom gets all choked up when Mal puts the finishing touches on her snow woman, finally noticing she is cradling what is probably meant to be snow baby.
“You couldn’t have just told us with words, like regular people?” he demands faintly, knocked back by shock, by something he eventually identifies as pure, blinding happiness.
He hugs Mal, red cheeks and cold nose pressed against his neck, just for a minute, and then does the same with Dom.
“Congratulations,” Eames says quietly, standing just a little apart from the rest of them.
Dom just grins at him and says, “We have cigars,” and Eames grins back.
As they’re all walking back into the house, Arthur notes Eames lingering, and, after a moment’s hesitation, hangs back with him, letting Mal and Dom go into the house alone.
“It’s like they’re real adults, now,” Arthur says wonderingly.
He’s been living on his own for almost ten years, he’s made millions, killed himself in dreams and killed enemies in real life. But he’s never quite felt like he was anything but himself, the whole time. He never felt a change, a moment where he could look back and say, “That was the day I became a man.”
Eames just hums vaguely, and Arthur turns to look him in the eye, his hand resting heavily on Eames’ arm.
“Is that why they did this? After they got married, I thought things would change, but they haven’t. But maybe - now that they’re going to have a child - maybe they--”
“They want you to be happy, Arthur. They’re not trying to get rid of you, or pass you off to me now that they’ll be too busy with their new sprog to look after you. Not that you take much looking after, at least from this lot. You give them everything they want and they barely even have to ask you for it.”
“They’re my best friends,” Arthur responds unrepentantly, chin up at a defiant angle.
Eames just smiles wearily. “And for once, they’re trying to deserve it, deserve you.”
Arthur scoffs. “By trying to marry me off to you?”
Eames reaches out, touching the side of Arthur’s face, finger running along the line of Arthur’s jaw, and Arthur accepts the warmth of his touch gratefully, eyes fluttering closed.
“They just want you to be happy, Arthur. And they think I’m the man for the job.”
Arthur opens his eyes, and is surprised by how close Eames’ face has suddenly become, close enough to count Eames’ eyelashes, if he wanted to.
He leans forward a little, helplessly drawn in, but something in Arthur’s face causes Eames to pull back, face shuttering, emotions locked up tight behind an easy, casual smile.
“Let’s go see about that turkey, yeah? I’m feeling positively peckish.”
Arthur trails after him reluctantly, wondering how many more of these opportunities Eames is going to give him to waste.
---
Arthur is clearing away the table, full and sluggish from too much turkey, when he hears Mal and Eames talking in the kitchen.
They’re speaking French, which would be cheating if all four of them weren’t fluent, and he makes out enough to know that Eames is filling Mal in on his travel plans. Apparently he’s heading back to Mombasa right after New Year’s. She tries to convince him to stay longer, but Eames is adamant, resigned.
Arthur is amazed by how much it bothers him.
---
“Out of curiosity, what was it before this?”
“Before what,” Arthur drawls, wishing he was uncertain enough to make it a real question.
“You know, before you were pretending the reason you’re not with Eames is that stupid double-cross in Budapest. I remember when you were still using the “professionalism” excuse, but even you stopped pretending to buy that one after the first year. I just can’t remember which excuse you used after that.”
Arthur sighs heavily, casting his eyes around the liquor store Dom has chosen for the location of this lovely chat. They’re meant to be buying back-up supplies for the New Year’s Eve party which is already getting underway at the house. When Mal asked them to go, Arthur had jumped at the chance to get out of the rapidly crowding house. He sees now that this was a mistake.
“You need to stop doing this shit to me,” he points out, sighing again and putting a large bottle of Crown Royal in their cart.
“Which excuse was it?” Dom presses, ignoring him.
Arthur debates the pros of leaving Dom here and stealing his car versus the cons of Mal killing him for it later.
He runs through a few quick scenarios, and eventually decides to just answer the question.
“He slept with someone. The architect we were using for all those jobs in Canada, remember?”
Dom nods, still looking expectant. Arthur shrugs.
“That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“What, that’s not good enough for you?”
“Arthur, you don’t get to reject him and routinely deny your feelings for him and then turn around and get mad that he slept with someone else.”
Arthur allows himself one final, put-upon sigh, and then says, “Well if you don’t like that one, there’s always the part where I pretend it’s because I’m still hung up on you.”
“Like I said, Arthur, that stopped being funny awhile ago. And it was never that funny to begin with.”
“Come on, Dom. It’s funny ’cause it’s not true.”
“You have to stop this,” Dom says with sudden urgency, leaning in close so their faces are inches apart, eyes narrowed, intent. “I know he’s hurt you, and that you don’t want to make yourself vulnerable to him, not when you know how much power he has over you even when you’re barely giving him the time of day. But this has to stop, for both your sakes. You can’t just opt out of love because it’s harder than you thought it would be.”
Arthur swallows. “I know that.”
“Do you?”
He shifts awkwardly, feeling pinned by Dom’s gaze, by thoughts of the conversation he overheard between Mal and Eames, his plans to leave the country, leave Arthur.
He straightens his shoulders. “I know.”
Dom claps him on the shoulder.
“Then it’s time you started acting like it.”
---
The party is in full-swing by the time they return with the alcohol. Arthur helps Dom unload the car and then dashes around the house, searching the crowds of elegant party guests for Eames.
He finds Mal, first, playing hostess, and she takes one look at Arthur’s face and beams at him, pulling him close to kiss his cheek.
“Thank you,” he says, because I’m sorry isn’t quite right and she probably wouldn’t accept it anyway.
“Anything for you, Arthur. You know that,” she says, dismissing him, and he sets off again, searching the house for Eames.
Arthur finds him, finally, standing alone in the spare bedroom on the second floor, looking out the window, a glass of whiskey in his hand.
Arthur doesn’t say anything, frozen, just looking at Eames, but Eames turns around anyway, raising his glass slightly to acknowledge Arthur’s presence.
“Happy New Year, Arthur,” he says, smiling faintly.
“Not yet,” Arthur blurts, making Eames raise a quizzical eyebrow. “It’s not quite midnight yet, we haven’t missed it.”
“And why would it matter if we did?”
“Because it’s - you’re supposed to spend New Year’s Eve with the person you want to spend the whole new year with. It’s a rite of passage. I wouldn’t want us to miss that kind of moment.”
Eames frowns. Not exactly the reaction Arthur was hoping for.
“You can't just be here for the moments you like, darling. You have to be here for all of them.”
Arthur crosses the room, standing close enough that he can almost hear Eames heart beat.
“I know that, I do. And I’m here because I’m trying. But,” Arthur shrugs, “I'm an asshole. And I'll probably always be an asshole.”
This, finally, gets Eames to smile, reaching out to cup Arthur’s jaw. “Fortunately, I happen to think that’s part of your charm.”
There’s none of Mal’s mistletoe hanging above where they are standing.
Arthur kisses Eames anyway.
Eames holds onto Arthur with both hands, and kisses him back.
Original Size
