(no subject)
Any Way You Choose To Give It
Inception: Arthur/Eames
5000 words
PG-13
BOARDING SCHOOL AU. Originally written for this prompt, cleaned up and added a tiny bit more!
Arthur doesn’t even meet his roommate until two weeks into the semester, at which point the only knowledge he’s gleaned about the guy is that he loves sweets, he doesn’t care about laundry days, and he watches Oprah religiously. The TV is always blaring the show when Arthur comes back from class, anyway.
Even his name is a mystery. Apparently the printer had gone haywire while processing Arthur’s Welcome Week packet, because there’s ink smudges everywhere, including over the spot where Arthur’s roommate’s first name should be. He’s got a last name, though: Eames.
Eames introduces himself as such when Arthur walks into the dorm room from his last class of the day. The TV programming has bled over into Ellen, and there’s a guy with dirty blond hair hopping around the room on one foot, trying to pull on a sock.
“What,” says Arthur, still holding the door open, his other hand clutching the strap of his messenger bag.
“Sorry!” the guy yells. He hops around in an oblong shape, then catches his balance by sitting on the edge of his desk and finally looks up.
“Hello,” he says in an English accent. “You must be Arthur. I’m Eames.”
“Hello,” Arthur echoes. Then he says, “Where’ve you been?”
“Around, mum, jeez.” Eames grins. He already has a smattering of blond hair covering his jawline. When he stands up, he asserts himself as both taller and broader than Arthur, though he holds his body at a slouchy angle, like he just can’t be bothered with posture.
Arthur finds himself standing up a bit straighter. Eames is still grinning, so Arthur shoots him a quick smile before putting his bag down on his desk.
“Nice to meet you,” Arthur says as he unloads textbooks.
“I’m sure,” says Eames.
*
Then Eames moves out.
“I don’t know, apparently he’s been in trouble before so they moved him to a building closer to faculty quarters,” Cobb explains.
“I’ve never even heard of him. I thought he transferred this year,” Arthur says.
Cobb smiles. “He did. He got in trouble before the school year even started.”
“Of course,” Arthur says warily, just at the same time Ariadne says, “I like this guy already.”
“What? I know way too many ‘nice’ guys who are nice in all the wrong ways,” Ariadne defends herself. She makes finger-quotes when she says ‘nice’. “Seriously, after boarding school for sixteen years, it’s kind of refreshing to hear about a guy who’s an asshole up front.”
Cobb picks up his pen and pretends to add something to his notes while Arthur doesn’t even try to ignore the way Ariadne stares out the window. At the end of last June, the charming, smart, friendly Rob Fischer had pretty much made a mess of Ariadne by blatantly cheating on her with Anna Messing. The end-of-the-year dance had been the most dramatic one in decades; even the faculty had been talking about it.
“Living well is the best revenge,” Cobb finally tries.
Ariadne stares him down. “I don’t need your platitudes, Dom.”
Arthur starts in on his Calculus homework. Sure, people say he's cold and unemotional, but at least he knows what not to say.
***
Calculus turns out to be Arthur’s most difficult class. The schedule is brutal, with four midterms and a cumulative final at the end. Cobb and Ariadne have a different teacher, so it’s usually Arthur in the library by himself, studying until close to curfew.
He’s there a few days before the first midterm, trying to work on the homework packet when he glances out the window and sees Ariadne, one blazer sleeve pulled down over her hand and pressed to her mouth. She’s facing the building, apparently talking to someone standing beneath the awning. Arthur presses his face to the window but he can’t see who it is.
He watches Ariadne for a bit; she keeps her hand against her mouth and suddenly he’s positive that she’s crying.
“Shit,” he says out loud (“Arthur!” Ms. Sanga scolds) and shoves his chair back with a scrape before jogging out of the library (“Arthur!” Ms. Sanga yells after him) and down the stairs. When he pushes the front doors open, he sees the lean figure of Rob Fischer with his back toward Arthur.
“Rob, don’t,” Ariadne is saying.
“Look, I’m really sorry that I hurt you,” Rob says evenly. “But you can see why it happened, right? I’m trying not to be an asshole and I’m sorry if that’s the case. Okay? Why are you crying?”
Ariadne cries harder at the question. She meets Arthur’s eyes and looks toward the ground immediately.
Arthur doesn’t get mad. He gets coolly angry and calculating. It’s been that way his whole life. So really, he has no idea why he taps Rob on the shoulder, and he also has no idea why he smashes his fist into Rob’s nose once Rob turns around.
He feels strangely detached from the whole thing until he hears Ms. Sanga gasp, “Arthur!”, for the third time in less than two minutes.
Arthur blinks, then looks down at Rob, who’s writhing around on the ground with his hands over his face like he’s performing some particularly moving segment of an interpretive dance. When he looks back up, Ariadne’s arms are hanging by her sides and her mouth is open, the corners slightly turned up.
Arthur wipes his hand on his pants and tries to ignore the throbbing in his joints. He turns around and faces Ms. Sanga.
“So where is the detention room again?” he asks.
*
Detention is held in a room on the top floor of the Hauser building, which is the tallest one on campus. It provides a nice view of the dining hall to accompany the scent of dinner that floats in through the open windows. The detention goers will get dinner after-hours, after their two hour captivity ends.
Arthur has already been there twenty minutes when the door swings open again and Eames walks in.
“Mr. Eames,” says Mr. Gao in a bored voice.
“Yes, sir,” Eames says cheerfully.
“You realize that every time you’re late to detention, you’re obligated to serve another one the next day.” Mr. Gao doesn’t even make it a question.
There are only about ten people in detention, but Eames slides into the seat next to Arthur, who wonders if he even recognizes him. “Can’t help it if I’m a busy man, Mr. Gao. I suppose it’s the price to pay.”
Mr. Gao sighs and goes back to grading papers. Arthur realizes he’s been staring at Eames this entire time, and Eames looks back at him before he can cut it out.
“Didn’t take you for the type,” he stage-whispers, silently raising his eyebrows at the icepack that’s resting on Arthur’s hand.
Arthur glances to the front of the room and sees Mr. Gao pretty much gunning them down with his eyes.
Thankfully, Eames stays quiet for the rest of the hour and a half. It’s only when Mr. Gao dismisses everyone and they’re filing out the door that Eames gently pulls at Arthur’s elbow before he can exit the classroom.
“Arthur, right? I feel like I hardly knew ye,” Eames says, letting go once Arthur slows his pace.
“You didn’t know me. But thanks for letting me have a single this year,” Arthur says.
When Eames laughs, it sounds genuine. “You’re going to get dinner? Are you prepared for the best square of dry, brittle steak you’ve ever had?”
“We’re not friends,” Arthur says in response. Not in a mean way, but factually. Because they’re not.
“Not yet,” Eames corrects, as if Arthur is the one who’s being slow around here. “Meal’s on you, yeah? It’s only fair considering I bowed out to let you have that single and all.”
“We’re not friends,” Arthur repeats, but he ends up going with Eames to the dining hall and getting two holes punched through on his meal card, anyway.
Eames just seems interesting, is all.
***
Eames is annoying as hell.
Sometimes he disappears for days at a time, but when he’s around he follows Arthur and pops up in places as if he’s got a tracking device. Then he proceeds to razz Arthur to all hell as if he’s known him for years. Arthur can usually pinpoint exactly what it is that makes someone annoying, but with Eames it’s just a general cloud of...annoyance. Like what makes him annoying is just him.
What’s more annoying is that Cobb and Ariadne like him. Their conversations even seem to pick up in the middle, which means Eames has been hanging out with them without Arthur.
“He’s not so bad,” Cobb says distractedly, reading through a paper. He’s probably proofreading one of Ariadne’s.
“He’s hilarious,” Ariadne agrees.
“Because he flirts with you,” Cobb points out.
Ariadne scoops some mashed potatoes into her mouth, then jabs her fork at Cobb. “He flirts with you, too.”
“I don’t like him,” Arthur announces.
“You just make yourself an easy target,” Cobb says. “And you usually brush off stuff like that, so what’s the problem?”
“You don’t like anyone, that’s just your baseline.” Ariadne waves him off. “Your opinion doesn’t count here anymore.”
She musses her hand over Arthur’s knee to soften the verbal blow. Arthur gets the feeling that she still feels bad and a little pissed off that he’s the one who ended up punching Rob, even though he’s repeatedly told her that it’s not like he punched Rob for her or anything. Rob is just an annoying prick who deserved to be punched.
Arthur watches Cobb’s eyes flick over the paper. “What are you reading?” he asks. If he sounds grumpy, it’s probably just because he’s tired.
“Eames let me borrow one of his papers. I’m having trouble getting started on my prompt and he took ethics last year at his old school,” Cobb replies. He looks at Arthur. “It’s actually really good,” he says, smiling.
“What?” Arthur reaches over and takes it. As he flips through pages, he sees that Cobb is right -- it practically reads like a scholarly work. “Are you sure he didn’t go to one of those Craigslist people who writes papers for you?”
Cobb shrugs. Sometimes, when he’s not being completely stubborn, he’s so amiable that Arthur wants to punch him. “I mean, I wouldn’t put something like that past anyone who goes here, but Eames doesn’t really seem like the type. Oh hey, actually,” he adds, brightening, “would you mind bringing that back to him? His building is on the way to yours and I’m meeting Mal for a movie in the lounge pretty soon after dinner.”
“And me,” Ariadne says.
“And you,” Cobb amends.
Arthur flips back to the first page as Cobb and Ariadne start talking about the movie they’re going to show. Eames hadn’t even used a proper MLA heading; just ‘EAMES’ in all caps, followed by a date underneath. What an asshole. It’s probably the only thing in the paper that he’d written himself.
*
“Oh,” Eames says when he opens the door and sees Arthur. “Arthur, hi.”
“Hi,” Arthur says. He takes a step back when Eames pokes his head out the door and looks down both sides of the hallway.
“Come on in,” Eames finally says.
The room is a mess. Arthur didn’t expect anything more, to be honest. There are crumpled oxford shirts everywhere, blazers tossed about. Eames seems to have a single room as well -- one that’s been paid for out of his parents’ pockets judging by the queen bed and the walk-in closet. A huge computer monitor is sitting on the desk, open to a spreadsheet.
“I just came by to drop off the paper you let Cobb borrow,” Arthur says, holding it up lamely.
“Right.” Eames takes it and glances at the first page, as if to make sure it’s his. “Thanks.” He tosses it to the ground and gestures toward the bed. “If you want to, you can -- ”
“It’s fine,” Arthur interrupts. They’re both standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. Eames seems different, on edge somehow. Arthur’s getting the feeling that he’s interrupting something.
Eames smiles, though it seems like it takes him some effort to do so. “Listen,” he begins, but there’s a knock at the door.
“I’m busy,” Eames calls without moving, but whoever it is knocks again.
“It’s fine,” Arthur repeats. He steps toward the door. “I’ll just leave.”
“No, no, just -- can you -- ”
Arthur sits on the bed as Eames opens the door, and tries not to watch as he reaches into his pocket and hands whoever’s outside some kind of small baggie. It’s a quick exchange, but Arthur recognizes it for what it is: a transaction.
As soon as Eames closes the door, Arthur bluntly says, “What the hell was that?”
“Ritalin,” Eames answers just as bluntly. He walks to his computer and fills something in on the spreadsheet.
The scope of Eames’s personality seems to have grown in exponential ways over the course of a day. Arthur watches with some admiration as Eames highlights cells, then enters numbers and shortcuts. Not just a rich international student, then -- a rich international student who sells drugs in a very organized manner, apparently.
“So, what, is this the Eames of the night-time? And the Eames of the day-time follows me around and lets people borrow papers he didn’t even write,” Arthur guesses.
“Let’s not presume to know me,” Eames snorts. He turns off the monitor and turns around, leaning back against the desk. “I usually save those kinds of confessions for a second date.”
Arthur changes tactics. “You could get expelled.”
“I’m aware,” Eames says simply. “Alright, listen, you weren’t supposed to see that but now you know my dirty secret. It’s not that big of a deal. I doubt you’re worried about my well-being, and really, it’s not that big of a deal, darling. Trust me.”
Eames crosses his arms over his chest, as if to challenge Arthur. His hair has grown out a bit since the beginning of the school year. It sticks up in the back and is styled into clumps, as if he’s just gotten finished surfing.
He’s right. Arthur shouldn’t care. There have been plenty of kids who’ve been expelled for drinking on campus, or plagiarizing, or selling things worse than Ritalin. It’s never affected Arthur, even if he’d interacted with them on a daily basis.
But for some reason, it doesn’t feel the same this time. Eames seems just as jaded as those other kids had been, but in a completely different way. Arthur can’t put his finger on it.
“Of course,” Arthur finally says, standing. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, when you’re doing your best to make me fail Calculus.”
Eames smiles. This time it looks sincere. “That’s why I like you, Arthur. You couldn’t give less of a shit about anything.”
***
Arthur doesn’t tell anyone else about Eames. He doesn’t witness anything like it again anyway, even after he starts hanging out in Eames’s room on occasion. Dom’s been spending more and more time with Mal and Ariadne has started an architecture club, so Eames is pretty much the only person around that Arthur sees on a regular basis. He doesn’t really have a choice in the matter but even if he did, he acknowledges that the outcome would probably be the same.
The Fall dance and the end of the semester are both coming up, the combination of which makes all the students quietly go crazy. Arthur kicks it into high gear and takes full advantage of the new later library hours. He sucks down coffee like a mad man and only eats when Eames sneaks him sandwiches from his backpack.
Eames even being in the library is a fairly novel turn of events. Once, Arthur looks at Eames’s book selections when he’s off in the bathroom and sees titles ranging anywhere from Psychopharmacology to Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan to Eat, Pray, Love.
Arthur doesn’t ask. In a way, he’s actually not surprised at all, because Eames keeps doing things that disprove Arthur’s theory about how he’s just a one-dimensional, future boarding school dropout. Arthur’s told him this theory many times over. He knows it’s not true -- he’s never said as much out loud, of course -- but they both seem to enjoy acting like it is.
By the time Eames gets back, Arthur is staring at his textbook again, but it takes him a while to be able to process anything he reads.
***
It’s three in the morning and a nine-page paper for US History is almost done when Arthur’s computer dies with an anticlimactic string of beeps and a blue screen. Arthur jabs at the power button about twenty times, calling Cobb with his free hand. It goes straight to voicemail. Ariadne never answers her phone if she’s sleeping and she keeps her 1:00am bedtime no matter what, but Arthur tries anyway.
By the time Arthur makes up his mind about who to call next, half of the power button has jammed into the computer.
When he gets to Eames’s room, the door is already hanging open. Thankfully, Eames isn’t lounging around in his underwear or a silk robe or anything. He looks like he just woke up, actually, with wrinkled khakis and the collar of his button-up skewed to one side. A pile of junk is covering half of the bed, with Eames lying on his stomach on the other half. A textbook is open in front of him.
“Was your paper really horrible enough for technology to commit suicide?” he asks wonderingly.
“You hold your pencil like a caveman,” Arthur shoots back. Or tries to, but it’s three in the morning and he’s mostly just glad for the open door and the warm glow of the desk lamp and Eames lying there with his stupid textbook, smiling at Arthur.
Eames makes a down-swinging noise like an aborted siren or a loud machine shutting off. Then he laughs to himself and resumes scribbling out his homework. They sit in silence for the next half hour or so as Arthur tries his best to recreate the few lost sentences. It’s not much, because he’s developed a habit of saving any and all documents every minute or so, but he sits there and makes tiny changes until he’s deleting and re-typing the same comma over and over.
“See, this is a good sign that you should just print the thing and go to sleep,” says Eames, apparently having gotten up from the bed to watch Arthur.
Arthur deletes the comma. “Well, I’m glad I amuse you.”
“You do amuse me, but not in a bad way.” Eames leans his hip against the desk. “I’m not trying to make you dance around like some sort of pet monkey. I just think we’re a good match.”
Arthur snorts. He re-types the comma.
“Having known you for a few months now, I’ve become very adept at interpreting these loving silences of yours and I have to tell you -- ” Eames squeezes Arthur’s shoulder for a brief second and puts on a soppy voice. “I feel the same way.”
Eames always stands a little too close to comfort, but a little too far for Arthur to find reason to back away. He has his arms crossed over his chest; Arthur can see the curve of his forearm and a thin scar that starts just before his elbow and continues past his rolled up shirt sleeve.
Arthur turns back to the monitor and stares at the cursor.
“Alright, I’m being serious now, are you planning to sit here all night over a comma?” Eames asks.
“No,” Arthur finally says. He clicks the ‘print’ icon and is glad when the familiar jerky noises of the printer start up.
***
The day of the dance and his last final, Arthur shows up to Eames’s room to find a note written on the whiteboard: SHOWERING. YOU’RE WELCOME TO JOIN ME IF YOU LIKE. There’s no telling if the note is meant specifically for Arthur, but he erases it with his fingers and lets himself into the room. It’s more of a mess than usual, which Arthur might attribute to it being finals week, but it’s probably just a random coincidence. Arthur doesn’t think he’s ever seen Eames doing real work.
He sits on the bed and rifles through his bag maybe a little too fervently because about seven things fall out and roll everywhere. Arthur sighs, then puts his bag down and kneels to retrieve pens, erasers, and sticky tabs. His pencil has rolled under Eames’s bed; Arthur balks at the thought of looking there, because who knows what the hell someone like Eames keeps under his bed.
It’s Arthur’s only pencil, though, so he ducks down and peers underneath the box springs. Contrary to his worst fears, there are only papers scattered there. Forests and forests worth, it seems like. Arthur grabs his pencil and retrieves a stack of papers on a whim as well.
When he sits up and rifles through them, he sees Eames’s handwriting, identical to the note he’d just erased on the whiteboard, filling up the pages in black and blue ink. Some are typed, with the same ‘EAMES’ heading he’d seen on the ethics paper that Cobb had. Calculus homework. History papers. English papers. Economics reports. Nothing under a 93%.
There’s also a single piece of paper that’s been folded into thirds. After a moment of hesitation, Arthur opens it up.
Dear Mr. Eames,
We are pleased to offer an extension on your scholarship for this coming school year, provided your disciplinary record remains unblemished. The scholarship will cover full tuition, as well as
Arthur stops reading and quickly folds the letter up again. His heart is pounding with both the knowledge of discovering something he wasn’t meant to know, and another issue that he doesn’t know if he’s ready to think about quite yet. He tosses the papers back under the bed, as if to erase his actions.
Eames, in all his irksome, smarmy personality, was a reassuring presence for those exact reasons. He purposely made it easy for people to write him off as some kind of spoiled and shallow brat with nothing beneath the surface. Arthur’s known as much for a while, but now that he’s found a crack in that shell, he doesn’t know whether he wants to pry everything else up or pretend it never even happened.
For a split second, he feels infuriated, overwhelmed with anger. Not at Eames, he doesn’t think, but the shit that he pulls. Arthur wonders what the point is -- not that people need explanations for their agendas, but he actually wants to hear what Eames has to say. They’ve never talked about it after that first time.
In the end, he scribbles that’s harassment on the whiteboard and goes back to his own dorm room. His final is late that afternoon and he has no problem mindlessly scribbling out three essays and handing in the test. He should be happy he made it through another semester, but there’s still that tense feeling in his gut.
Halfway back to his dorm, he takes the left path instead of the right and heads towards Eames’s room once more.
*
Eames isn’t in there.
Arthur exits the building, unable to figure out if he’s relieved or disappointed. Just as he turns to walk along the side of the building, a cloud of smoke floats into the air from around the next corner. Arthur feels slightly triumphant when he walks toward it and Eames comes into view.
He squints up at Arthur, obviously holding his breath. “Hi,” he finally chokes out, coughing and breathing out smoke all at once. He’s sitting up against the wall and is holding a squished-looking cigarette that’s probably not a cigarette.
“It’s a cigarette,” he tries anyway.
“You’re such an idiot,” Arthur says, and it sounds fond even to his own ears. He doesn’t mean to say the next part: “You know you could get expelled.”
Eames is too busy hacking up a lung to respond. He waves his hand at Arthur, the universal sign for I’m sorry. “It’s funny, you don’t look like a broken record, but you do a very good imitation of one,” Eames finally replies in between coughs.
“It’s different this time.”
“And why?”
“Because. Because I find it hard to believe that you’d give up a scholarship on something as stupid as this.”
Eames smiles at him crookedly, as if he’s disappointed it took Arthur this long to find out. “I’m touched you think you know me well enough to be so assertive. Actually, I think I’m doing the students of this school a great service.”
He goes to put the zig-zag out, but then Arthur says, “Wait, stop.”
“What?” Eames asks with a final cough.
“Here, let me -- ” Arthur holds out his hand. Eames looks at the joint and then at Arthur before shaking his head.
“Oh, no. I’m not going to be responsible for corrupting the future dictator of America,” Eames protests.
“Shut up. It’s the night before semester break. Also, I can make my own decisions. This isn’t my first time.”
“It isn’t your first time,” Eames repeats slowly, and the words sound entirely different coming from him. “Well, alright then. But I don’t want your family knocking down my door, screaming about how I besmirched their sweet, innocent Arthur’s dignity.”
“Can you stop talking for a second?” Arthur asks.
He accepts the proffered joint and inhales. Eames must have left some tobacco in it because it hits hard, going straight to his head and pulling him higher once the weed kicks in. He takes a several more hits, piggybacking them off one another as Eames watches him the entire time.
The sun has almost set when Eames asks, “What do you think about this dance?”
“Fuck the dance,” Arthur says, and walks around the building toward the football field, knowing that Eames will get up and follow.
*
Arthur marvels at how expansive the sky looks.
It occurs to him that maybe this feeling is what all those drug officers and public speakers talk about when they mention teenagers believing in their own invincibility, but Arthur really does feel invincible. Eames makes him feel invincible, and he says as much.
Eames laughs. The sound bursts into the silence and dark of the football field. “So you are a normal person sometimes!” he crows.
“Only when pushed very hard,” Arthur says. When Eames doesn’t respond, he turns his head and sees Eames just looking at him, a slight twist to his mouth.
“Well, I’m glad I could be of help,” Eames finally says.
He pillows his chin on his crossed arms. Arthur examines his face -- the hooded eyes, the slope of his nose that makes his profile look like that of a much older man.
“Jesus, Arthur. I can practically feel you undressing me,” Eames declares.
It’s an offhand comment, completely within the realm of Eames’s personality; the only thing that’s different this time is Arthur’s reaction. Instead of being annoyed or ignoring him as usual, Arthur has to close his eyes and just breathe. The high has moved from his brain to his body and he feels hyper-aware of every inch of himself, from his toes and all the way to his fingertips, where they’re clasped behind his head.
“Arthur.” Eames sounds much closer now. Arthur swallows at the imagined proximity. “If I lie on top of you, are you going to hit me in the face?”
Arthur doesn’t answer.
He’s able to mentally count to ten before something knocks against his knee, and then Eames’s leg is sliding over Arthur’s, followed by the drag of a hipbone. Eames is heavy and he smells like aftershave. He seems to be keeping Arthur’s respiratory skills in mind, because he stops moving when he’s draped about halfway over Arthur. Maybe it’s a superfluous worry, though, because Arthur doesn’t think he’s taken a breath in the last thirty seconds or so.
When Arthur finally exhales and opens his eyes, Eames has his head propped up on one hand, elbow digging into the grass above Arthur’s shoulder. He touches his index finger to Arthur’s chin and says, “Arthur.”
“Yes.”
“If I did something with my mouth to your mouth, would you hit -- ”
Eames stops talking when Arthur slides the palm of his hand over the back of Eames’s head and pulls him down. He may be broad-shouldered, and brash, and an obnoxious flirt, but he kisses more softly than Arthur could have imagined. Arthur doesn’t realize just how much he likes it until Eames pulls away, murmurs, “Shit,” right against the hollow of Arthur’s throat.
Arthur realizes he has Eames’s tie in a sweaty, wrinkled grip within his fist. Then he moves suddenly, perhaps impolitely kneeing Eames judging by the wince on his face as he rolls them over, but in the end he successfully switches their positions and gets on top of Eames.
Eames looks up at Arthur. The whites of his eyes are slightly bloodshot but otherwise he looks pretty sober. “You’re so strange, I don’t even know what to do with you.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Arthur tells him. “You don’t even know me.”
Eames grins. That mouth, those teeth; Arthur leans down and kisses him again.
AND THEN THERE'S A SEQUEL
Inception: Arthur/Eames
5000 words
PG-13
BOARDING SCHOOL AU. Originally written for this prompt, cleaned up and added a tiny bit more!
Arthur doesn’t even meet his roommate until two weeks into the semester, at which point the only knowledge he’s gleaned about the guy is that he loves sweets, he doesn’t care about laundry days, and he watches Oprah religiously. The TV is always blaring the show when Arthur comes back from class, anyway.
Even his name is a mystery. Apparently the printer had gone haywire while processing Arthur’s Welcome Week packet, because there’s ink smudges everywhere, including over the spot where Arthur’s roommate’s first name should be. He’s got a last name, though: Eames.
Eames introduces himself as such when Arthur walks into the dorm room from his last class of the day. The TV programming has bled over into Ellen, and there’s a guy with dirty blond hair hopping around the room on one foot, trying to pull on a sock.
“What,” says Arthur, still holding the door open, his other hand clutching the strap of his messenger bag.
“Sorry!” the guy yells. He hops around in an oblong shape, then catches his balance by sitting on the edge of his desk and finally looks up.
“Hello,” he says in an English accent. “You must be Arthur. I’m Eames.”
“Hello,” Arthur echoes. Then he says, “Where’ve you been?”
“Around, mum, jeez.” Eames grins. He already has a smattering of blond hair covering his jawline. When he stands up, he asserts himself as both taller and broader than Arthur, though he holds his body at a slouchy angle, like he just can’t be bothered with posture.
Arthur finds himself standing up a bit straighter. Eames is still grinning, so Arthur shoots him a quick smile before putting his bag down on his desk.
“Nice to meet you,” Arthur says as he unloads textbooks.
“I’m sure,” says Eames.
*
Then Eames moves out.
“I don’t know, apparently he’s been in trouble before so they moved him to a building closer to faculty quarters,” Cobb explains.
“I’ve never even heard of him. I thought he transferred this year,” Arthur says.
Cobb smiles. “He did. He got in trouble before the school year even started.”
“Of course,” Arthur says warily, just at the same time Ariadne says, “I like this guy already.”
“What? I know way too many ‘nice’ guys who are nice in all the wrong ways,” Ariadne defends herself. She makes finger-quotes when she says ‘nice’. “Seriously, after boarding school for sixteen years, it’s kind of refreshing to hear about a guy who’s an asshole up front.”
Cobb picks up his pen and pretends to add something to his notes while Arthur doesn’t even try to ignore the way Ariadne stares out the window. At the end of last June, the charming, smart, friendly Rob Fischer had pretty much made a mess of Ariadne by blatantly cheating on her with Anna Messing. The end-of-the-year dance had been the most dramatic one in decades; even the faculty had been talking about it.
“Living well is the best revenge,” Cobb finally tries.
Ariadne stares him down. “I don’t need your platitudes, Dom.”
Arthur starts in on his Calculus homework. Sure, people say he's cold and unemotional, but at least he knows what not to say.
***
Calculus turns out to be Arthur’s most difficult class. The schedule is brutal, with four midterms and a cumulative final at the end. Cobb and Ariadne have a different teacher, so it’s usually Arthur in the library by himself, studying until close to curfew.
He’s there a few days before the first midterm, trying to work on the homework packet when he glances out the window and sees Ariadne, one blazer sleeve pulled down over her hand and pressed to her mouth. She’s facing the building, apparently talking to someone standing beneath the awning. Arthur presses his face to the window but he can’t see who it is.
He watches Ariadne for a bit; she keeps her hand against her mouth and suddenly he’s positive that she’s crying.
“Shit,” he says out loud (“Arthur!” Ms. Sanga scolds) and shoves his chair back with a scrape before jogging out of the library (“Arthur!” Ms. Sanga yells after him) and down the stairs. When he pushes the front doors open, he sees the lean figure of Rob Fischer with his back toward Arthur.
“Rob, don’t,” Ariadne is saying.
“Look, I’m really sorry that I hurt you,” Rob says evenly. “But you can see why it happened, right? I’m trying not to be an asshole and I’m sorry if that’s the case. Okay? Why are you crying?”
Ariadne cries harder at the question. She meets Arthur’s eyes and looks toward the ground immediately.
Arthur doesn’t get mad. He gets coolly angry and calculating. It’s been that way his whole life. So really, he has no idea why he taps Rob on the shoulder, and he also has no idea why he smashes his fist into Rob’s nose once Rob turns around.
He feels strangely detached from the whole thing until he hears Ms. Sanga gasp, “Arthur!”, for the third time in less than two minutes.
Arthur blinks, then looks down at Rob, who’s writhing around on the ground with his hands over his face like he’s performing some particularly moving segment of an interpretive dance. When he looks back up, Ariadne’s arms are hanging by her sides and her mouth is open, the corners slightly turned up.
Arthur wipes his hand on his pants and tries to ignore the throbbing in his joints. He turns around and faces Ms. Sanga.
“So where is the detention room again?” he asks.
*
Detention is held in a room on the top floor of the Hauser building, which is the tallest one on campus. It provides a nice view of the dining hall to accompany the scent of dinner that floats in through the open windows. The detention goers will get dinner after-hours, after their two hour captivity ends.
Arthur has already been there twenty minutes when the door swings open again and Eames walks in.
“Mr. Eames,” says Mr. Gao in a bored voice.
“Yes, sir,” Eames says cheerfully.
“You realize that every time you’re late to detention, you’re obligated to serve another one the next day.” Mr. Gao doesn’t even make it a question.
There are only about ten people in detention, but Eames slides into the seat next to Arthur, who wonders if he even recognizes him. “Can’t help it if I’m a busy man, Mr. Gao. I suppose it’s the price to pay.”
Mr. Gao sighs and goes back to grading papers. Arthur realizes he’s been staring at Eames this entire time, and Eames looks back at him before he can cut it out.
“Didn’t take you for the type,” he stage-whispers, silently raising his eyebrows at the icepack that’s resting on Arthur’s hand.
Arthur glances to the front of the room and sees Mr. Gao pretty much gunning them down with his eyes.
Thankfully, Eames stays quiet for the rest of the hour and a half. It’s only when Mr. Gao dismisses everyone and they’re filing out the door that Eames gently pulls at Arthur’s elbow before he can exit the classroom.
“Arthur, right? I feel like I hardly knew ye,” Eames says, letting go once Arthur slows his pace.
“You didn’t know me. But thanks for letting me have a single this year,” Arthur says.
When Eames laughs, it sounds genuine. “You’re going to get dinner? Are you prepared for the best square of dry, brittle steak you’ve ever had?”
“We’re not friends,” Arthur says in response. Not in a mean way, but factually. Because they’re not.
“Not yet,” Eames corrects, as if Arthur is the one who’s being slow around here. “Meal’s on you, yeah? It’s only fair considering I bowed out to let you have that single and all.”
“We’re not friends,” Arthur repeats, but he ends up going with Eames to the dining hall and getting two holes punched through on his meal card, anyway.
Eames just seems interesting, is all.
***
Eames is annoying as hell.
Sometimes he disappears for days at a time, but when he’s around he follows Arthur and pops up in places as if he’s got a tracking device. Then he proceeds to razz Arthur to all hell as if he’s known him for years. Arthur can usually pinpoint exactly what it is that makes someone annoying, but with Eames it’s just a general cloud of...annoyance. Like what makes him annoying is just him.
What’s more annoying is that Cobb and Ariadne like him. Their conversations even seem to pick up in the middle, which means Eames has been hanging out with them without Arthur.
“He’s not so bad,” Cobb says distractedly, reading through a paper. He’s probably proofreading one of Ariadne’s.
“He’s hilarious,” Ariadne agrees.
“Because he flirts with you,” Cobb points out.
Ariadne scoops some mashed potatoes into her mouth, then jabs her fork at Cobb. “He flirts with you, too.”
“I don’t like him,” Arthur announces.
“You just make yourself an easy target,” Cobb says. “And you usually brush off stuff like that, so what’s the problem?”
“You don’t like anyone, that’s just your baseline.” Ariadne waves him off. “Your opinion doesn’t count here anymore.”
She musses her hand over Arthur’s knee to soften the verbal blow. Arthur gets the feeling that she still feels bad and a little pissed off that he’s the one who ended up punching Rob, even though he’s repeatedly told her that it’s not like he punched Rob for her or anything. Rob is just an annoying prick who deserved to be punched.
Arthur watches Cobb’s eyes flick over the paper. “What are you reading?” he asks. If he sounds grumpy, it’s probably just because he’s tired.
“Eames let me borrow one of his papers. I’m having trouble getting started on my prompt and he took ethics last year at his old school,” Cobb replies. He looks at Arthur. “It’s actually really good,” he says, smiling.
“What?” Arthur reaches over and takes it. As he flips through pages, he sees that Cobb is right -- it practically reads like a scholarly work. “Are you sure he didn’t go to one of those Craigslist people who writes papers for you?”
Cobb shrugs. Sometimes, when he’s not being completely stubborn, he’s so amiable that Arthur wants to punch him. “I mean, I wouldn’t put something like that past anyone who goes here, but Eames doesn’t really seem like the type. Oh hey, actually,” he adds, brightening, “would you mind bringing that back to him? His building is on the way to yours and I’m meeting Mal for a movie in the lounge pretty soon after dinner.”
“And me,” Ariadne says.
“And you,” Cobb amends.
Arthur flips back to the first page as Cobb and Ariadne start talking about the movie they’re going to show. Eames hadn’t even used a proper MLA heading; just ‘EAMES’ in all caps, followed by a date underneath. What an asshole. It’s probably the only thing in the paper that he’d written himself.
*
“Oh,” Eames says when he opens the door and sees Arthur. “Arthur, hi.”
“Hi,” Arthur says. He takes a step back when Eames pokes his head out the door and looks down both sides of the hallway.
“Come on in,” Eames finally says.
The room is a mess. Arthur didn’t expect anything more, to be honest. There are crumpled oxford shirts everywhere, blazers tossed about. Eames seems to have a single room as well -- one that’s been paid for out of his parents’ pockets judging by the queen bed and the walk-in closet. A huge computer monitor is sitting on the desk, open to a spreadsheet.
“I just came by to drop off the paper you let Cobb borrow,” Arthur says, holding it up lamely.
“Right.” Eames takes it and glances at the first page, as if to make sure it’s his. “Thanks.” He tosses it to the ground and gestures toward the bed. “If you want to, you can -- ”
“It’s fine,” Arthur interrupts. They’re both standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. Eames seems different, on edge somehow. Arthur’s getting the feeling that he’s interrupting something.
Eames smiles, though it seems like it takes him some effort to do so. “Listen,” he begins, but there’s a knock at the door.
“I’m busy,” Eames calls without moving, but whoever it is knocks again.
“It’s fine,” Arthur repeats. He steps toward the door. “I’ll just leave.”
“No, no, just -- can you -- ”
Arthur sits on the bed as Eames opens the door, and tries not to watch as he reaches into his pocket and hands whoever’s outside some kind of small baggie. It’s a quick exchange, but Arthur recognizes it for what it is: a transaction.
As soon as Eames closes the door, Arthur bluntly says, “What the hell was that?”
“Ritalin,” Eames answers just as bluntly. He walks to his computer and fills something in on the spreadsheet.
The scope of Eames’s personality seems to have grown in exponential ways over the course of a day. Arthur watches with some admiration as Eames highlights cells, then enters numbers and shortcuts. Not just a rich international student, then -- a rich international student who sells drugs in a very organized manner, apparently.
“So, what, is this the Eames of the night-time? And the Eames of the day-time follows me around and lets people borrow papers he didn’t even write,” Arthur guesses.
“Let’s not presume to know me,” Eames snorts. He turns off the monitor and turns around, leaning back against the desk. “I usually save those kinds of confessions for a second date.”
Arthur changes tactics. “You could get expelled.”
“I’m aware,” Eames says simply. “Alright, listen, you weren’t supposed to see that but now you know my dirty secret. It’s not that big of a deal. I doubt you’re worried about my well-being, and really, it’s not that big of a deal, darling. Trust me.”
Eames crosses his arms over his chest, as if to challenge Arthur. His hair has grown out a bit since the beginning of the school year. It sticks up in the back and is styled into clumps, as if he’s just gotten finished surfing.
He’s right. Arthur shouldn’t care. There have been plenty of kids who’ve been expelled for drinking on campus, or plagiarizing, or selling things worse than Ritalin. It’s never affected Arthur, even if he’d interacted with them on a daily basis.
But for some reason, it doesn’t feel the same this time. Eames seems just as jaded as those other kids had been, but in a completely different way. Arthur can’t put his finger on it.
“Of course,” Arthur finally says, standing. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, when you’re doing your best to make me fail Calculus.”
Eames smiles. This time it looks sincere. “That’s why I like you, Arthur. You couldn’t give less of a shit about anything.”
***
Arthur doesn’t tell anyone else about Eames. He doesn’t witness anything like it again anyway, even after he starts hanging out in Eames’s room on occasion. Dom’s been spending more and more time with Mal and Ariadne has started an architecture club, so Eames is pretty much the only person around that Arthur sees on a regular basis. He doesn’t really have a choice in the matter but even if he did, he acknowledges that the outcome would probably be the same.
The Fall dance and the end of the semester are both coming up, the combination of which makes all the students quietly go crazy. Arthur kicks it into high gear and takes full advantage of the new later library hours. He sucks down coffee like a mad man and only eats when Eames sneaks him sandwiches from his backpack.
Eames even being in the library is a fairly novel turn of events. Once, Arthur looks at Eames’s book selections when he’s off in the bathroom and sees titles ranging anywhere from Psychopharmacology to Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan to Eat, Pray, Love.
Arthur doesn’t ask. In a way, he’s actually not surprised at all, because Eames keeps doing things that disprove Arthur’s theory about how he’s just a one-dimensional, future boarding school dropout. Arthur’s told him this theory many times over. He knows it’s not true -- he’s never said as much out loud, of course -- but they both seem to enjoy acting like it is.
By the time Eames gets back, Arthur is staring at his textbook again, but it takes him a while to be able to process anything he reads.
***
It’s three in the morning and a nine-page paper for US History is almost done when Arthur’s computer dies with an anticlimactic string of beeps and a blue screen. Arthur jabs at the power button about twenty times, calling Cobb with his free hand. It goes straight to voicemail. Ariadne never answers her phone if she’s sleeping and she keeps her 1:00am bedtime no matter what, but Arthur tries anyway.
By the time Arthur makes up his mind about who to call next, half of the power button has jammed into the computer.
When he gets to Eames’s room, the door is already hanging open. Thankfully, Eames isn’t lounging around in his underwear or a silk robe or anything. He looks like he just woke up, actually, with wrinkled khakis and the collar of his button-up skewed to one side. A pile of junk is covering half of the bed, with Eames lying on his stomach on the other half. A textbook is open in front of him.
“Was your paper really horrible enough for technology to commit suicide?” he asks wonderingly.
“You hold your pencil like a caveman,” Arthur shoots back. Or tries to, but it’s three in the morning and he’s mostly just glad for the open door and the warm glow of the desk lamp and Eames lying there with his stupid textbook, smiling at Arthur.
Eames makes a down-swinging noise like an aborted siren or a loud machine shutting off. Then he laughs to himself and resumes scribbling out his homework. They sit in silence for the next half hour or so as Arthur tries his best to recreate the few lost sentences. It’s not much, because he’s developed a habit of saving any and all documents every minute or so, but he sits there and makes tiny changes until he’s deleting and re-typing the same comma over and over.
“See, this is a good sign that you should just print the thing and go to sleep,” says Eames, apparently having gotten up from the bed to watch Arthur.
Arthur deletes the comma. “Well, I’m glad I amuse you.”
“You do amuse me, but not in a bad way.” Eames leans his hip against the desk. “I’m not trying to make you dance around like some sort of pet monkey. I just think we’re a good match.”
Arthur snorts. He re-types the comma.
“Having known you for a few months now, I’ve become very adept at interpreting these loving silences of yours and I have to tell you -- ” Eames squeezes Arthur’s shoulder for a brief second and puts on a soppy voice. “I feel the same way.”
Eames always stands a little too close to comfort, but a little too far for Arthur to find reason to back away. He has his arms crossed over his chest; Arthur can see the curve of his forearm and a thin scar that starts just before his elbow and continues past his rolled up shirt sleeve.
Arthur turns back to the monitor and stares at the cursor.
“Alright, I’m being serious now, are you planning to sit here all night over a comma?” Eames asks.
“No,” Arthur finally says. He clicks the ‘print’ icon and is glad when the familiar jerky noises of the printer start up.
***
The day of the dance and his last final, Arthur shows up to Eames’s room to find a note written on the whiteboard: SHOWERING. YOU’RE WELCOME TO JOIN ME IF YOU LIKE. There’s no telling if the note is meant specifically for Arthur, but he erases it with his fingers and lets himself into the room. It’s more of a mess than usual, which Arthur might attribute to it being finals week, but it’s probably just a random coincidence. Arthur doesn’t think he’s ever seen Eames doing real work.
He sits on the bed and rifles through his bag maybe a little too fervently because about seven things fall out and roll everywhere. Arthur sighs, then puts his bag down and kneels to retrieve pens, erasers, and sticky tabs. His pencil has rolled under Eames’s bed; Arthur balks at the thought of looking there, because who knows what the hell someone like Eames keeps under his bed.
It’s Arthur’s only pencil, though, so he ducks down and peers underneath the box springs. Contrary to his worst fears, there are only papers scattered there. Forests and forests worth, it seems like. Arthur grabs his pencil and retrieves a stack of papers on a whim as well.
When he sits up and rifles through them, he sees Eames’s handwriting, identical to the note he’d just erased on the whiteboard, filling up the pages in black and blue ink. Some are typed, with the same ‘EAMES’ heading he’d seen on the ethics paper that Cobb had. Calculus homework. History papers. English papers. Economics reports. Nothing under a 93%.
There’s also a single piece of paper that’s been folded into thirds. After a moment of hesitation, Arthur opens it up.
Dear Mr. Eames,
We are pleased to offer an extension on your scholarship for this coming school year, provided your disciplinary record remains unblemished. The scholarship will cover full tuition, as well as
Arthur stops reading and quickly folds the letter up again. His heart is pounding with both the knowledge of discovering something he wasn’t meant to know, and another issue that he doesn’t know if he’s ready to think about quite yet. He tosses the papers back under the bed, as if to erase his actions.
Eames, in all his irksome, smarmy personality, was a reassuring presence for those exact reasons. He purposely made it easy for people to write him off as some kind of spoiled and shallow brat with nothing beneath the surface. Arthur’s known as much for a while, but now that he’s found a crack in that shell, he doesn’t know whether he wants to pry everything else up or pretend it never even happened.
For a split second, he feels infuriated, overwhelmed with anger. Not at Eames, he doesn’t think, but the shit that he pulls. Arthur wonders what the point is -- not that people need explanations for their agendas, but he actually wants to hear what Eames has to say. They’ve never talked about it after that first time.
In the end, he scribbles that’s harassment on the whiteboard and goes back to his own dorm room. His final is late that afternoon and he has no problem mindlessly scribbling out three essays and handing in the test. He should be happy he made it through another semester, but there’s still that tense feeling in his gut.
Halfway back to his dorm, he takes the left path instead of the right and heads towards Eames’s room once more.
*
Eames isn’t in there.
Arthur exits the building, unable to figure out if he’s relieved or disappointed. Just as he turns to walk along the side of the building, a cloud of smoke floats into the air from around the next corner. Arthur feels slightly triumphant when he walks toward it and Eames comes into view.
He squints up at Arthur, obviously holding his breath. “Hi,” he finally chokes out, coughing and breathing out smoke all at once. He’s sitting up against the wall and is holding a squished-looking cigarette that’s probably not a cigarette.
“It’s a cigarette,” he tries anyway.
“You’re such an idiot,” Arthur says, and it sounds fond even to his own ears. He doesn’t mean to say the next part: “You know you could get expelled.”
Eames is too busy hacking up a lung to respond. He waves his hand at Arthur, the universal sign for I’m sorry. “It’s funny, you don’t look like a broken record, but you do a very good imitation of one,” Eames finally replies in between coughs.
“It’s different this time.”
“And why?”
“Because. Because I find it hard to believe that you’d give up a scholarship on something as stupid as this.”
Eames smiles at him crookedly, as if he’s disappointed it took Arthur this long to find out. “I’m touched you think you know me well enough to be so assertive. Actually, I think I’m doing the students of this school a great service.”
He goes to put the zig-zag out, but then Arthur says, “Wait, stop.”
“What?” Eames asks with a final cough.
“Here, let me -- ” Arthur holds out his hand. Eames looks at the joint and then at Arthur before shaking his head.
“Oh, no. I’m not going to be responsible for corrupting the future dictator of America,” Eames protests.
“Shut up. It’s the night before semester break. Also, I can make my own decisions. This isn’t my first time.”
“It isn’t your first time,” Eames repeats slowly, and the words sound entirely different coming from him. “Well, alright then. But I don’t want your family knocking down my door, screaming about how I besmirched their sweet, innocent Arthur’s dignity.”
“Can you stop talking for a second?” Arthur asks.
He accepts the proffered joint and inhales. Eames must have left some tobacco in it because it hits hard, going straight to his head and pulling him higher once the weed kicks in. He takes a several more hits, piggybacking them off one another as Eames watches him the entire time.
The sun has almost set when Eames asks, “What do you think about this dance?”
“Fuck the dance,” Arthur says, and walks around the building toward the football field, knowing that Eames will get up and follow.
*
Arthur marvels at how expansive the sky looks.
It occurs to him that maybe this feeling is what all those drug officers and public speakers talk about when they mention teenagers believing in their own invincibility, but Arthur really does feel invincible. Eames makes him feel invincible, and he says as much.
Eames laughs. The sound bursts into the silence and dark of the football field. “So you are a normal person sometimes!” he crows.
“Only when pushed very hard,” Arthur says. When Eames doesn’t respond, he turns his head and sees Eames just looking at him, a slight twist to his mouth.
“Well, I’m glad I could be of help,” Eames finally says.
He pillows his chin on his crossed arms. Arthur examines his face -- the hooded eyes, the slope of his nose that makes his profile look like that of a much older man.
“Jesus, Arthur. I can practically feel you undressing me,” Eames declares.
It’s an offhand comment, completely within the realm of Eames’s personality; the only thing that’s different this time is Arthur’s reaction. Instead of being annoyed or ignoring him as usual, Arthur has to close his eyes and just breathe. The high has moved from his brain to his body and he feels hyper-aware of every inch of himself, from his toes and all the way to his fingertips, where they’re clasped behind his head.
“Arthur.” Eames sounds much closer now. Arthur swallows at the imagined proximity. “If I lie on top of you, are you going to hit me in the face?”
Arthur doesn’t answer.
He’s able to mentally count to ten before something knocks against his knee, and then Eames’s leg is sliding over Arthur’s, followed by the drag of a hipbone. Eames is heavy and he smells like aftershave. He seems to be keeping Arthur’s respiratory skills in mind, because he stops moving when he’s draped about halfway over Arthur. Maybe it’s a superfluous worry, though, because Arthur doesn’t think he’s taken a breath in the last thirty seconds or so.
When Arthur finally exhales and opens his eyes, Eames has his head propped up on one hand, elbow digging into the grass above Arthur’s shoulder. He touches his index finger to Arthur’s chin and says, “Arthur.”
“Yes.”
“If I did something with my mouth to your mouth, would you hit -- ”
Eames stops talking when Arthur slides the palm of his hand over the back of Eames’s head and pulls him down. He may be broad-shouldered, and brash, and an obnoxious flirt, but he kisses more softly than Arthur could have imagined. Arthur doesn’t realize just how much he likes it until Eames pulls away, murmurs, “Shit,” right against the hollow of Arthur’s throat.
Arthur realizes he has Eames’s tie in a sweaty, wrinkled grip within his fist. Then he moves suddenly, perhaps impolitely kneeing Eames judging by the wince on his face as he rolls them over, but in the end he successfully switches their positions and gets on top of Eames.
Eames looks up at Arthur. The whites of his eyes are slightly bloodshot but otherwise he looks pretty sober. “You’re so strange, I don’t even know what to do with you.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Arthur tells him. “You don’t even know me.”
Eames grins. That mouth, those teeth; Arthur leans down and kisses him again.
AND THEN THERE'S A SEQUEL