Never Catch Him Looking Up, Never Looking Down
Title: Never Catch Him Looking Up, Never Looking Down
Author: ifeelbetter
Warning: Ummm...this is The Sadness. I pulled out all the stops and made myself a bit melancholy for the rest of the evening after I wrote this. I don't want to spoil the ending but it is Not Happy.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of value besides one truly awesome ukulele.
Word Count: 2,075
Summary: The ups and downs of having been together for so long and the thing that's hovering over them all the time.
Notes: Prompt from inception_kink meme: They have been a couple for many, many years in the real world. Decades. They are now old men, their relationship still as strong as ever, though as flawed as any other. I want one of them (whichever inspires you most, I'm not picky) to reminisce on their life together and realize that soon one of them will die. They panic at the thought of being alone, but don't want to leave the other alone either.
The title comes from a Laura Marling song called Failure.
The first time Arthur said it, they had been in their forties and Eames had laughed. It was a ridiculous thing to say--to think--back then.
Now their conversation circled around joint pains like a flushing toilet and Eames couldn't help but think the simile was a bit too apt, like they really were two lives swirling down a drain somewhere.
"I could have done so much," Arthur said again, wistfully. He had said it accusingly the first time, back in their stronger days.
Eames snorted.
Arthur turned his face just far enough to see Eames's silhouette but not so far that he was putting himself to any extraordinary effort. "No, really," he insisted. "I could have done everything."
"You're going to have to paint me a picture, darling," Eames said, "because I can't imagine anything else fitting into your life."
Arthur sighed.
"What else did you want to do?" Eames insisted. "What did you want to do that you skipped?"
They both knew the answer but sometimes Eames liked to say it out loud, like picking at a scab. He liked to grit into the ache of it.
Arthur didn't answer, just tapped a finger on the arm of his wooden chair. When they were young men, it had been the coiling of his nerves that made him tap away.
Now, his hands just shivered in space and there was nothing coiled underneath.
* * *
"I wish we'd taken photos," Eames said into the silence.
Arthur threw a sock at him. "Where would we have gotten a camera?"
* * *
When Arthur made the coffee, it tasted bitter and thick. Eames hated his coffee. Arthur hated making coffee and waking up first and, secretly, his own coffee. He made it that way because he had always made it that way and he clung onto the way things had always been. Eames knew he was glad to hold tightly to that sort of thing, refusing to forget.
* * *
Arthur lost his footing sometimes. His feet stumbled against nothing and he'd start to topple. Back when they were younger, he caught himself. These days, he stumbled more and Eames caught him.
"Like the blind leading the blind," said Arthur. His breath was gone from the jolt. It was amazing how quickly he lost his breath these days.
"Or the old leading the old," Eames said, smiling. Arthur smiled back but not at Eames, not directly towards him. The skin around his eyes crinkled like old paper.
* * *
Eames found them a house by a lake at some point and it had been more of a headquarters than a home for ages. Their traces were worn into the timber of the walls long before they woke up one morning and realized it had become a home.
Arthur, when he had realized it, had run away for three months. He'd disappeared and Eames had sat alone on the dock. He'd fished some days, dangling an empty rod into the empty lake. He tried to remember books he read when he was a child on other days, wringing his memory for the name of the main characters and the solutions to the mysteries he'd loved.
Arthur came back eventually. Eames had been prepared for a much longer wait but Arthur always had to come back.
* * *
"This is a waste of time," Arthur shouted. He threw a book across the room where it hit a lamp, knocking out half of the room's light.
Eames took off his reading glasses, folded them carefully, and put them into his shirt pocket before he looked at Arthur. "Where would you rather be, pet?" he asked.
Sometimes it broke something inside him when Arthur looked at him the way he did then. Arthur's face was filled with all those fervent pitches, the wrinkles tracking and holding onto the passions of the past like tracks on a record. He hated Eames sometimes, Eames knew that.
"It's a waste of everything," said Arthur, petulantly. He sank back into the arm chair. Half of the room was shrouded in darkness.
"What were you reading?" Eames asked.
"The Mirror Crack'd."
"Agatha Christie," said Eames. "I never finished that one."
"I know."
"That's the one with the actress, right? And the Tennyson poem?"
Arthur started tapping against the side of his arm chair. "A ridiculous misunderstanding of Tennyson, yes."
"Oh?" Eames kept his voice level but knew, then, that Arthur's tantrum was over. He loved nothing more than to prove someone else had gotten something wrong. Once on the topic, his discontent would be shelved.
"Christie's missing the magic of the poem. The Lady of Shallot isn't just waiting for a piece of the puzzle--she's doomed all along." Arthur sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "She's trapped. Her whole life is one room and she can't leave it, can't see anything beyond shadows of something beautiful ... and real."
Eames pushed himself out of his chair, aching and creaking.
"Do you remember the poem?" asked Arthur, looking directly at him.
"Somewhat. It's been a long time since primary school."
"And moving through a mirror clear that hangs before her all the year," Arthur quoted easily, "Shadows of the world appear."
"She weaves, though, I remember that," Eames said, pulling his simple wooden chair to sit directly in front of Arthur. "She weaves the world that she sees in the reflection."
"It's just a reflection, Eames. When she falls in love, she has to turn towards reality. And then she shatters," Arthur said, leaning forward, his elbows pressing into his knees.
"We all shatter sometime or other," Eames said, leaning awkwardly forward to pat Arthur's hands.
Arthur started to cough, then, in huge, hacking gasps. Eames rubbed his back as Arthur leaned even further forward. His back shuddered under the coughing fit but Eames kept rubbing until he quieted.
* * *
"I wonder what Paris would be like right now," said Arthur. Eames handed him a cup of coffee.
"We could go see," said Eames. "We could drive to an airport and take a plane. You used to like planes, I think."
"I never liked planes," said Arthur, wrinkling his nose. "No leg room."
"We could have leg room. We could have a whole plane, if you liked." Eames was full of promises that morning.
"Remember when we went to the Eiffel Tower?" said Arthur. He held the mug of coffee to his mouth, right up against his lips.
"We never went to the Eiffel Tower, darling," said Eames. "We went to the bathroom stall in the patisserie down the block from the Eiffel Tower."
"I can't believe we missed the Eiffel Tower," said Arthur. He didn't sound regretful. There were tinges of amusement in his voice, around his eyes.
"Do you know, if we went again, right now?" Eames said, refilling the kettle at the sink. "We'd miss it again. I swear, I could take us right back to that same patisserie--"
"You're too old, Eames," said Arthur.
"Never too old," said Eames. "I'm never too old for that."
Arthur grinned. "Prove it."
* * *
Arthur coughed more in his sleep the older he got. Eames would roll over and whisper something--or nothing--into his ear until the fit passed.
Eames had trouble standing. His back felt like an rusty spring, giving less and less with every passing day. One day, he'd be frozen. One day, he was sure, his back would keep him locked in a painful arch and he'd never see the sky above him again.
"You're like Modigliani's caryatids," Arthur said. "The weight is crushing you."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Eames said.
"Look," Arthur said, pulling an art book out from under the sofa. He flipped it open, almost not needing to look to make sure he ended up on the right page.
The painting was simple enough, drawn in reds and browns.
"Do you know, I once forged the caryatid from Erechtheum?" Eames said conversationally. "For a mark who wanted to buy all of the Elgin marbles."
"You've told me this story," said Arthur impatiently. He tapped the book. "This is the piece of art we're talking about right now."
"I know."
"Don't you think it's like you? Bent over by her troubles?" said Arthur, a nasty accusing tone creeping into his words. "I'd free her. I'd free you."
Eames smiled serenely. "I'd have to want to be free."
* * *
Arthur's fits got worse. Sometimes, when Eames ran his hand through Arthur's hair, he'd find blood caked in the strands near the back. Sometimes his fingers would be stained red, even, from a fresh patch.
Then there were days when Arthur couldn't get out of bed. He wheezed and tapped the mattress irritably.
Eames annoyed Arthur greatly when he was incapacitated. He tried not to but found that it was uncontrollable. Every time he opened his mouth, something would fly out that he knew, even without being in the same room, would grate against Arthur's nerves.
Even when he didn't say anything, Arthur grumbled. He didn't like Eames's silences any more than he liked his speech.
* * *
There came a point when Arthur never stood up at all. He didn't seem to mind Eames's badgering anymore, either. His eyes would follow Eames around their bedroom, his breath hissing out of his lungs like a tea kettle. Eames could carry him around the house and leave him reclining on sofas and settees and Arthur wouldn't complain.
"You've made me a villain," Arthur told him. "You've made me the villain of this story."
"Nonsense," Eames said, setting aside the coffee mugs he had been drying. "Anyone would tell you that you're obviously the romantic lead."
"I'm the villain and you're the heroine I've got tied to the train tracks," Arthur insisted. "What did Mal used to say? In Cobb's dreams?"
"This is completely different," Eames said seriously. He sat down next to Arthur on the sofa, moving Arthur's feet onto his lap to make room. "I'm not waiting for a train, my love."
"You are, though," said Arthur and, for the first time, there was something like the promise of tears in his eyes. He'd been angry many times but he'd never done this before. "I'm going to die and then you'll go mad."
Eames sighed.
"We're old men, Arthur," he said, after a long pause. "That was my plan. We're old men and I kept you the entire time. That's it."
"But afterward, Eames. You always ignore what's going to come next."
Eames kissed Arthur's forehead. "I've never ignored it. I just don't mind it."
"Cobb said that a person alone in Limbo goes mad, Eames. Once I die--once the hole in my head catches up to me--you're going to be alone here. You're going to go mad but you won't be old anymore. You'll be young and you'll be alone and mad." Arthur wasn't shouting it, the way he had when they'd first arrived. He was begging.
Back in the real world, Arthur was bleeding into the sidewalk and Eames was drooped over him, both of their arms connected to the PASIV. There were minutes--seconds, even--before the rest of the team caught up with them.
But Eames had made a choice. He chose to go mad in Limbo rather than miss growing old with Arthur. He chose to watch Arthur die inexorably slowly and to have Arthur hate him as often as he loved him.
"I promise to shoot myself in the head the moment you're gone if it makes you any happier," Eames said. "But I won't leave you a second before then."
"Eames," said Arthur. "It's too much--you make me hate myself."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Eames.
* * *
The day Arthur died was the same as any other day. Eames woke up one morning and met Arthur's blank, lifeless eyes staring at him. Eames looked into his blank eyes for too long. He'd waited decades knowing this would happen at some point but he still couldn't believe there was nothing left in those eyes.
But he made a promise and so he pulled the dusty Smith & Weston .38 out of his bedside drawer and solemnly shot himself in the temple.
* * *
They buried Arthur on a Tuesday.
But Eames made a promise and Arthur hadn't noticed the loophole he'd written in. I promise to shoot myself the moment you're gone, he had said.
They buried Eames on a Wednesday.
Author: ifeelbetter
Warning: Ummm...this is The Sadness. I pulled out all the stops and made myself a bit melancholy for the rest of the evening after I wrote this. I don't want to spoil the ending but it is Not Happy.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of value besides one truly awesome ukulele.
Word Count: 2,075
Summary: The ups and downs of having been together for so long and the thing that's hovering over them all the time.
Notes: Prompt from inception_kink meme: They have been a couple for many, many years in the real world. Decades. They are now old men, their relationship still as strong as ever, though as flawed as any other. I want one of them (whichever inspires you most, I'm not picky) to reminisce on their life together and realize that soon one of them will die. They panic at the thought of being alone, but don't want to leave the other alone either.
The title comes from a Laura Marling song called Failure.
The first time Arthur said it, they had been in their forties and Eames had laughed. It was a ridiculous thing to say--to think--back then.
Now their conversation circled around joint pains like a flushing toilet and Eames couldn't help but think the simile was a bit too apt, like they really were two lives swirling down a drain somewhere.
"I could have done so much," Arthur said again, wistfully. He had said it accusingly the first time, back in their stronger days.
Eames snorted.
Arthur turned his face just far enough to see Eames's silhouette but not so far that he was putting himself to any extraordinary effort. "No, really," he insisted. "I could have done everything."
"You're going to have to paint me a picture, darling," Eames said, "because I can't imagine anything else fitting into your life."
Arthur sighed.
"What else did you want to do?" Eames insisted. "What did you want to do that you skipped?"
They both knew the answer but sometimes Eames liked to say it out loud, like picking at a scab. He liked to grit into the ache of it.
Arthur didn't answer, just tapped a finger on the arm of his wooden chair. When they were young men, it had been the coiling of his nerves that made him tap away.
Now, his hands just shivered in space and there was nothing coiled underneath.
* * *
"I wish we'd taken photos," Eames said into the silence.
Arthur threw a sock at him. "Where would we have gotten a camera?"
* * *
When Arthur made the coffee, it tasted bitter and thick. Eames hated his coffee. Arthur hated making coffee and waking up first and, secretly, his own coffee. He made it that way because he had always made it that way and he clung onto the way things had always been. Eames knew he was glad to hold tightly to that sort of thing, refusing to forget.
* * *
Arthur lost his footing sometimes. His feet stumbled against nothing and he'd start to topple. Back when they were younger, he caught himself. These days, he stumbled more and Eames caught him.
"Like the blind leading the blind," said Arthur. His breath was gone from the jolt. It was amazing how quickly he lost his breath these days.
"Or the old leading the old," Eames said, smiling. Arthur smiled back but not at Eames, not directly towards him. The skin around his eyes crinkled like old paper.
* * *
Eames found them a house by a lake at some point and it had been more of a headquarters than a home for ages. Their traces were worn into the timber of the walls long before they woke up one morning and realized it had become a home.
Arthur, when he had realized it, had run away for three months. He'd disappeared and Eames had sat alone on the dock. He'd fished some days, dangling an empty rod into the empty lake. He tried to remember books he read when he was a child on other days, wringing his memory for the name of the main characters and the solutions to the mysteries he'd loved.
Arthur came back eventually. Eames had been prepared for a much longer wait but Arthur always had to come back.
* * *
"This is a waste of time," Arthur shouted. He threw a book across the room where it hit a lamp, knocking out half of the room's light.
Eames took off his reading glasses, folded them carefully, and put them into his shirt pocket before he looked at Arthur. "Where would you rather be, pet?" he asked.
Sometimes it broke something inside him when Arthur looked at him the way he did then. Arthur's face was filled with all those fervent pitches, the wrinkles tracking and holding onto the passions of the past like tracks on a record. He hated Eames sometimes, Eames knew that.
"It's a waste of everything," said Arthur, petulantly. He sank back into the arm chair. Half of the room was shrouded in darkness.
"What were you reading?" Eames asked.
"The Mirror Crack'd."
"Agatha Christie," said Eames. "I never finished that one."
"I know."
"That's the one with the actress, right? And the Tennyson poem?"
Arthur started tapping against the side of his arm chair. "A ridiculous misunderstanding of Tennyson, yes."
"Oh?" Eames kept his voice level but knew, then, that Arthur's tantrum was over. He loved nothing more than to prove someone else had gotten something wrong. Once on the topic, his discontent would be shelved.
"Christie's missing the magic of the poem. The Lady of Shallot isn't just waiting for a piece of the puzzle--she's doomed all along." Arthur sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "She's trapped. Her whole life is one room and she can't leave it, can't see anything beyond shadows of something beautiful ... and real."
Eames pushed himself out of his chair, aching and creaking.
"Do you remember the poem?" asked Arthur, looking directly at him.
"Somewhat. It's been a long time since primary school."
"And moving through a mirror clear that hangs before her all the year," Arthur quoted easily, "Shadows of the world appear."
"She weaves, though, I remember that," Eames said, pulling his simple wooden chair to sit directly in front of Arthur. "She weaves the world that she sees in the reflection."
"It's just a reflection, Eames. When she falls in love, she has to turn towards reality. And then she shatters," Arthur said, leaning forward, his elbows pressing into his knees.
"We all shatter sometime or other," Eames said, leaning awkwardly forward to pat Arthur's hands.
Arthur started to cough, then, in huge, hacking gasps. Eames rubbed his back as Arthur leaned even further forward. His back shuddered under the coughing fit but Eames kept rubbing until he quieted.
* * *
"I wonder what Paris would be like right now," said Arthur. Eames handed him a cup of coffee.
"We could go see," said Eames. "We could drive to an airport and take a plane. You used to like planes, I think."
"I never liked planes," said Arthur, wrinkling his nose. "No leg room."
"We could have leg room. We could have a whole plane, if you liked." Eames was full of promises that morning.
"Remember when we went to the Eiffel Tower?" said Arthur. He held the mug of coffee to his mouth, right up against his lips.
"We never went to the Eiffel Tower, darling," said Eames. "We went to the bathroom stall in the patisserie down the block from the Eiffel Tower."
"I can't believe we missed the Eiffel Tower," said Arthur. He didn't sound regretful. There were tinges of amusement in his voice, around his eyes.
"Do you know, if we went again, right now?" Eames said, refilling the kettle at the sink. "We'd miss it again. I swear, I could take us right back to that same patisserie--"
"You're too old, Eames," said Arthur.
"Never too old," said Eames. "I'm never too old for that."
Arthur grinned. "Prove it."
* * *
Arthur coughed more in his sleep the older he got. Eames would roll over and whisper something--or nothing--into his ear until the fit passed.
Eames had trouble standing. His back felt like an rusty spring, giving less and less with every passing day. One day, he'd be frozen. One day, he was sure, his back would keep him locked in a painful arch and he'd never see the sky above him again.
"You're like Modigliani's caryatids," Arthur said. "The weight is crushing you."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Eames said.
"Look," Arthur said, pulling an art book out from under the sofa. He flipped it open, almost not needing to look to make sure he ended up on the right page.
The painting was simple enough, drawn in reds and browns.
"Do you know, I once forged the caryatid from Erechtheum?" Eames said conversationally. "For a mark who wanted to buy all of the Elgin marbles."
"You've told me this story," said Arthur impatiently. He tapped the book. "This is the piece of art we're talking about right now."
"I know."
"Don't you think it's like you? Bent over by her troubles?" said Arthur, a nasty accusing tone creeping into his words. "I'd free her. I'd free you."
Eames smiled serenely. "I'd have to want to be free."
* * *
Arthur's fits got worse. Sometimes, when Eames ran his hand through Arthur's hair, he'd find blood caked in the strands near the back. Sometimes his fingers would be stained red, even, from a fresh patch.
Then there were days when Arthur couldn't get out of bed. He wheezed and tapped the mattress irritably.
Eames annoyed Arthur greatly when he was incapacitated. He tried not to but found that it was uncontrollable. Every time he opened his mouth, something would fly out that he knew, even without being in the same room, would grate against Arthur's nerves.
Even when he didn't say anything, Arthur grumbled. He didn't like Eames's silences any more than he liked his speech.
* * *
There came a point when Arthur never stood up at all. He didn't seem to mind Eames's badgering anymore, either. His eyes would follow Eames around their bedroom, his breath hissing out of his lungs like a tea kettle. Eames could carry him around the house and leave him reclining on sofas and settees and Arthur wouldn't complain.
"You've made me a villain," Arthur told him. "You've made me the villain of this story."
"Nonsense," Eames said, setting aside the coffee mugs he had been drying. "Anyone would tell you that you're obviously the romantic lead."
"I'm the villain and you're the heroine I've got tied to the train tracks," Arthur insisted. "What did Mal used to say? In Cobb's dreams?"
"This is completely different," Eames said seriously. He sat down next to Arthur on the sofa, moving Arthur's feet onto his lap to make room. "I'm not waiting for a train, my love."
"You are, though," said Arthur and, for the first time, there was something like the promise of tears in his eyes. He'd been angry many times but he'd never done this before. "I'm going to die and then you'll go mad."
Eames sighed.
"We're old men, Arthur," he said, after a long pause. "That was my plan. We're old men and I kept you the entire time. That's it."
"But afterward, Eames. You always ignore what's going to come next."
Eames kissed Arthur's forehead. "I've never ignored it. I just don't mind it."
"Cobb said that a person alone in Limbo goes mad, Eames. Once I die--once the hole in my head catches up to me--you're going to be alone here. You're going to go mad but you won't be old anymore. You'll be young and you'll be alone and mad." Arthur wasn't shouting it, the way he had when they'd first arrived. He was begging.
Back in the real world, Arthur was bleeding into the sidewalk and Eames was drooped over him, both of their arms connected to the PASIV. There were minutes--seconds, even--before the rest of the team caught up with them.
But Eames had made a choice. He chose to go mad in Limbo rather than miss growing old with Arthur. He chose to watch Arthur die inexorably slowly and to have Arthur hate him as often as he loved him.
"I promise to shoot myself in the head the moment you're gone if it makes you any happier," Eames said. "But I won't leave you a second before then."
"Eames," said Arthur. "It's too much--you make me hate myself."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Eames.
* * *
The day Arthur died was the same as any other day. Eames woke up one morning and met Arthur's blank, lifeless eyes staring at him. Eames looked into his blank eyes for too long. He'd waited decades knowing this would happen at some point but he still couldn't believe there was nothing left in those eyes.
But he made a promise and so he pulled the dusty Smith & Weston .38 out of his bedside drawer and solemnly shot himself in the temple.
* * *
They buried Arthur on a Tuesday.
But Eames made a promise and Arthur hadn't noticed the loophole he'd written in. I promise to shoot myself the moment you're gone, he had said.
They buried Eames on a Wednesday.