window born to be broken

[wldnst]

.window born to be broken
eames is a romance novelist. there is a very pretty man in the office across the way from his new apartment. written for bironic 's prompt.
notes: title from forest fire's 'i make windows.'
regarding this fic: when this was first posted anon over at the kinkmeme, there was some discussion of certain comments (within the fic) being misogynistic. I think I resolved that issue with the edit while still retaining the spirit of the original, but I'm open to further changes and debate of that issue, either here in the comments or, if you prefer, via pm. sometimes it's hard to see past your own intent to other interpretations. 
r . 4642 words

Eames moves into his new flat on Sunday.

Yusuf helps him, because Yusuf has an inexplicable pickup truck. Eames has a sedan, and also a mattress and a sofa and a round coffee table and three bookcases and a roll-top desk, and together they cuss and carry these things, with the exception of the sedan, up three flights of stairs, and Eames moves into his flat.

Well; not quite. After Yusuf leaves Eames takes a giant duffel full of clothes and bag upon bag of books and some soft cardboard boxes full of other things out of his sedan, and then he goes to sleep on his mattress without bothering to put the sheets on, and Eames figures he’s moved into his flat properly, then, even though he still has to put the books on the shelves. Then Eames falls asleep.

In the morning it is Monday. Eames doesn’t go to work, because he is a writer and his job is to sit on his ass and type things all day, and do other things that will ensure he can and will continue to type, and occasionally talk to his agent on the phone and tell her that yeah, the next book is coming along, okay.

Eames writes the sort of romance novels women buy in the grocery story, which is ironic because he is not a woman and most of his food comes from takeaways and the gas station.

So when Eames wakes up on Monday morning, he goes about recreating his flat as it was in his old flat, which he had to leave because his landlord was an asshole and had all his friends call him up in the wee hours of the morning and tell him how much he, his landlord, wanted him, Eames, to move out, and eventually he just bit the bullet and did move out, because the hostile environment made his usually shitty writing unusually shitty. But he really liked the flat, which had been in Staten Island where most of his neighbors had liked him but didn’t expect him to befriend them, and now Yusuf had convinced him to move to hipster Brooklyn, which was probably better for things like getting Eames laid and eating things other than Sno-Balls, but wasn’t really conducive to Eames continuing to live in the antisocial style to which he was accustomed.

Still, the new flat, which is a sort of artist’s loft, is nice, and the new landlord doesn’t seem like the sort to know lots of bored retirees who will harass tenants via phone in the wee hours, so that’s a plus. And there’s no lino anywhere, also a plus.

Eames wonders if he should go to Ikea and get some new furniture, like maybe a bed, but he doesn’t really want to beg Yusuf for the use of his inexplicable pickup again. So instead he sets up his desk the way it was before, but next to the window because now he has a window. Then Eames sits down to write, because his desk is set up and he really can’t think of anything better to do.

But first he looks out the window, which looks out on to the fire escape and across a narrow alley full of dumpsters to the new office building next door. The office building is all glass windows, which is the way they make them now, which seems like shit for insulation, but maybe it’s fancy glass or something. It’s an architecture firm, if Eames remembers correctly (which he usually does, because for all his faults and his cigarettes, his memory is good). Eames supposes they don’t throw many stones, over at the architecture firm.

From Eames’ desk, looking out the window, he can see another desk, facing away from the windowed wall of the architecture firm and also away from Eames’ window, and there is a man sitting at it, which is interesting. From what Eames can tell, he has dark hair and a thin silhouette, and there is a suit jacket over the back of his chair. There is an architect’s table set up across one side of the office, so if he stands up to work Eames will see him in profile, but Eames decides it’s time for him to do some work himself and shifts his eyes to the computer screen.

Eames is good at his job in the same way he imagines a telemarketer might be good at their job; he has no particular passion, but he has a formula, and he doesn’t stop. He had wanted to be a literary sort of writer, once, and had had stories published in his university literary magazine, but he never got further than that and suddenly he found himself to be this weird sort of hack, cranking out romance novels that public libraries threw away after they got to be five years old. So he writes for three hours, is the point, and only stops when his cell phone rings.

“Hi Yusuf,” he says, because Yusuf and his mother and his agent are pretty much the only people who call him.

“Eames, my man!” Yusuf says. “Are you sitting in your apartment working? Because you seriously need to get out.”

“Um,” Eames looks around, but no good lie presents itself. “You know I’m sitting in the apartment working, Yusuf. It’s my job.”

“Your job,” Yusuf says. “Is to come to the bar tonight and let your good friend Yusuf make you some drinks and introduce you to some people.”

“I’ll come on Thursday,” Eames says, because Thursday isn’t Monday, and going to the bar on Monday night is pathetic, but it also isn’t Friday, when everyone will be spilling from their day jobs into the weekend, hoping to find something that will help them forget precisely how shitty their lives are.

“You can’t keep this up, Eames. Remember when you used to come to the bar all the time? Remember?”

Eames remembers.

“No,” Eames says. “We’re not talking about this right now Yusuf.”

“Seriously, Eames, everyone misses you.”

Eames hangs up before Yusuf starts to tell him that he “has friends” and “doesn’t need to pretend like he doesn’t” or some shit. He looks out the window.

Across the way, the man at the architecture firm has turned away from his desk. He’s eating something out of a Tupperware container using chopsticks, and then a girl comes in to talk to him and he turns back around.

Eames exhales. Because as far as he can tell from here, the man at the architecture firm is gorgeous, all long lines and dark eyes. He’s standing to talk now, and he’s wearing a waistcoat with this shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, and he looks beautiful and overdressed, because the girl he’s speaking to is wearing skinny jeans and a t-shirt and a scarf.

Then the man from the architecture firm follows the girl out of his office, and the view from Eames’ old flat wasn’t one-tenth this good. So maybe Brooklyn has its advantages.

Eames goes into the kitchen to make lunch. By which he means “pour milk over Froot Loops.”

Although Eames writes the sort of books where people fall madly in love with individuals they’ve never spoken to, and spy people from a distance on street corners who they will later meet through a series of coincidences, he doesn’t really believe in those things. But it’s nice, he decides, to have an attractive man across the way, even if Eames isn’t about to walk over to the architecture firm and demand a meeting, or start some sort of window courtship.

Eames fishes his weights out of a cardboard box and does some lifts in the living room, where he’d keep his TV if he had a TV. It feels good; it helps him think. The novel he’s working on now is coming along, not particularly better or worse than any of his other work, but characters are taking shape and the plot is moving. So he thinks about that, and decides to go for a walk besides, so that when Yusuf calls he can tell Yusuf he went outside.

Eames wonders when Yusuf became his mother.

To keep Yusuf from being too proud, Eames buys a pack of Sno-Balls on his way back to his apartment and eats them for dinner. When he gets back, the man at the architecture firm is still at his desk. Around five o’clock when Eames can see the others at the firm trickling out of his office, this man just stands up, loosens his tie and takes off his waistcoat, and goes to the tall desk along the side of his office to draft. He has a lovely sharp profile, and Eames watches him as the sun sets, and Brooklyn slips into the city’s approximation of darkness and it’s early summer, so that must mean it’s late.

Eames goes to his own desk, and writes until midnight. The man from the architecture firm flips off the light and leaves his office at ten thirty.

Tuesday and Wednesday are a lot like Monday, except on Tuesday Eames goes to the grocery store and buys some real food, and doesn’t lift weights because carrying the groceries home was a work out by itself, and Wednesday there’s a thunderstorm and the sidewalks go all dark and shiny like oil, so Eames wears a raincoat for his walk. On Thursday after dinner (broccoli, and a can of tuna fish) Eames goes to Yusuf’s bar, which is only about a block away, and Eames wonders if Yusuf set him up with this apartment on purpose. He wouldn’t put it past Yusuf, frankly.

Eames and Yusuf had met when Yusuf was still a lowly bartender at a shit joint in Staten Island and Eames was fresh off the boat and trying to make a living among the New York literati. Eames had missed the mark somewhat, but Yusuf had met an investor at the shithole in Staten Island and opened up a place in Brooklyn, back when it was just one of the slightly better burroughs and not quite the hipster mecca it is today.

Since then, Somnacin has been written up in the Times twice. Eames is pretty sure he isn’t jealous, but only because Yusuf mixes the best drinks this side of anywhere, and Eames’ are on the house (unless he wants the Very Special Scotch, which he usually doesn’t).

“Eames,” Yusuf shouts when he comes in. “I’ve got something fruity with your name on it!”

The bar is loud, but Yusuf is louder, so half the room turns and looks and him, and Eames sidles up to the bar and takes a seat.

“At least let me retain some vestige of--something. Not being the kind of person who drinks fruity drinks,” he says. “I’ll have a beer to kick things off.”

Yusuf has several microbrews on tap, and he gives Eames a tumbler of something from the Brooklyn Brewery.

Eames drinks it, and listens idly to Yusuf’s conversations, and thinks that this isn’t so bad, not bad at all. And the beer is good, besides, not too hoppy.

“Something fruity,” he says to Yusuf, when he finishes it. “Give me your best shot.”

“I knew you couldn’t resist me,” Yusuf says, and mixes something up. It’s orange fading yellow, and he pours it in a martini glass, and Eames can’t resist grinning. Okay, so sue him, he likes fruity drinks, especially when he doesn’t know what they are.

And if you go to Somnacin and only drink the beer you’re a goddamn fool, because Yusuf mixes the best drinks this side of anywhere.

Eames is about halfway through the yellow-orange thing, which tastes like mango and hard liquor and something he can’t name, when someone comes in and sits at the bar a few seats down, and Yusuf looks at him and says, “Scotch on the rocks?” and someone nods, and it is just after ten-thirty and it is the man from the architecture firm, there and in the flesh, and he looks just as good sitting two stools down from Eames as he does from across the alley.

The man from the architecture firm drinks his scotch and leaves, and Eames watches him do these things.

“Yusuf,” Eames hisses as the man leaves. “Do you know that man?”

“Scotch on the rocks?” Yusuf asks. “He comes in weekdays around now, but he doesn’t really talk. Why?”

“No reason,” says Eames, and then realizes that is the worst possible answer.

Yusuf narrows his eyes. “Do you have a crush?”

“No, fuck no Yusuf. Just because I’m gay...”

“You can’t pull that one on me Eames. I know you. I know your type. You like scrawny guys with dark hair and sticks up their asses.”

“Shut up. Just shut up Yusuf,” Eames says, burying his face in his hands. “I do not.”

Eames will acknowledge that he is beginning to sound like a petulant child, and blames whatever Yusuf put in the mango thing. Which was, okay, delicious.

“Eames,” Yusuf says. “I will use all my bartending wiles to extract as much information about scotch on the rocks as possible, from here on out, because you are my best friend and you are maybe, finally, getting over He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and I’ll make you another drink.”

Eames scowls, but takes the drink.

On Friday night Eames doesn’t make dinner until eleven, and right when he puts his grilled cheese sandwich in the pan Yusuf calls him.

“His name,” Yusuf says, apropos of nothing, “Is Arthur.”

Eames frowns and pokes his grilled cheese with a spatula.

“Do you think I’m still pining over Jeff?” he asks.

“So we can talk about Jeff now?” Yusuf says, and that’s about all the answer Eames needs.

“No,” he says, and hangs up.

Yusuf calls him back.

“I don’t want to talk about Jeff,” Eames says.

“Okay,” says Yusuf, and makes conversation about other things, and Eames can hear the bustle of Somnacin in the background, and he knows Yusuf must have the phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder while he tends bar.

Eames is standing there, looking at his grilled cheese the whole time, but somehow he still burns it.

Eames isn’t talking about Jeff, but if he were he’d say that Jeff was a shit. Eames should have known better than to ever sleep with anyone that far in the closet, but Jeff was a scrawny guy with dark hair and a stick up his ass, and Eames couldn’t resist.

These things go a certain way, if you’re in real life and not a romance novel, and so one day Jeff tells Eames he’s engaged to some woman, and they need to end this, and Eames throws something and goes to Somnacin and gets smashed. Two months after the wedding Jeff calls Eames up, and Eames has just enough dignity to chuck his phone at the wall, and when he goes to the store to get a new one he changes his number.

So that’s it, about Jeff. If you asked Yusuf he’d probably say that Eames went all antisocial afterwards, but Yusuf is wrong. Eames just doesn’t like people, and especially not Jeff. He wonders about the wife sometimes; if she knows. If she reads Eames’ novels and wonders why Jeff isn’t like that, which was something Eames always wondered, although he writes those novels and doesn’t believe anyone is like that. Maybe Jeff’s wife agrees. Maybe they would get along, Jeff’s wife and Eames.

Or maybe Jeff is kind to his wife, and buys her flowers. That would be worse in some ways.

Eames eats his burnt grilled cheese with the more burnt side upwards, so it touches the roof of his mouth and not his tongue, and he thinks it tastes better that way.

It’s the weekend so Arthur isn’t at work, but Eames goes over to Yusuf’s flat during the day and they play video games and don’t talk about Jeff. On Sunday Eames goes to the library and gets the new Nora Roberts, to check out his competition, and also some books he can talk about in public, and when he gets home he realizes he’s been in the new flat for a week, so he goes to the grocery store and buys a bottle of wine, and wishes he had someone he could call to celebrate, but Yusuf is at work, and he left all his other friends’ numbers on his old phone, when he smashed it.

He drinks the wine and reads the new Nora Roberts, which sucks, but he finishes it anyway. He drinks more wine and goes to bed, and at least now his mattress is made up like a bed, even if it’s getting too hot for blankets to really be worth it.

When he wakes up, Arthur is there, and that makes him smile. He walks past the window in his boxers and waves, but Arthur has his back to him and Eames is pretty sure you can’t see through his windows during the daytime anyway.

Arthur, Eames thinks, is like the sun in that Eames sees him and knows he’s present, but he’s very far away and, also, Arthur doesn’t know Eames exists. Eames realizes that’s a shit comparison, and part of him wishes he hadn’t even thought it because it’s so shit, and the other part of him thinks about Icarus and flying too close to the sun and wax wings melting.

It’s safer this way, he decides. Even if he doesn’t have any fucking wings.

Eames doesn’t bother to get dressed and just sits at his desk in his boxers and writes for a while, and after lunch he goes out on the fire escape to smoke a cigarette. After he lights up he looks across the way and there are two dark eyes staring at him, and then there’s the back of a dark head.

So now Arthur knows Eames exists, and sits on the fire escape on Monday afternoons in his boxers smoking cigarettes. Eames has to admit that he didn’t really think the whole fire escape thing through as well as he should have, because he just wanted a cigarette. Eames wonders how Arthur feels about tattoos.

Eames finishes with the cigarette and goes back inside, and when he stands up to go he thinks he catches a glimpse of Arthur in profile, so he raises his hand and waves, and he goes inside before he can see if there’s a response. Wax wings melting, he thinks, and sits down to write.

Yusuf keeps telling Eames things about Arthur, little things and big things and things he already knows.

“He works for an architecture firm,” Yusuf tells him on Monday. “He likes classical music.”

Tuesday it’s, “He lives alone with a cat named after Frank Lloyd Wright.”

“So Frank?” Eames asks.

“Wright,” Yusuf says.

“He likes his job,” on Wednesday.

On Thursday Eames goes to Somnacin, and if Arthur recognizes him he doesn’t show it. But he doesn’t talk to Yusuf that day, either.

“He hates his job,” on Friday.

On Saturday afternoon Yusuf convinces Eames to meet him and some of their old friends in the park to play Ultimate frisbee, and Eames isn’t ashamed to admit that he likes Ultimate frisbee, so he goes.

And it’s fun. It’s really, really fun. He’s amazed at how easily he slips into the group, like he hadn’t stopped playing Ultimate with them in midsummer last year. They make fun of his newest novel with him, and Cobb and Mal have a baby who is adorable. Afterwards someone dumps charcoal in a grill and pulls beer out of a cooler, and they sit around on blankets until Yusuf has to go open the bar, and everyone sort of follows him there, and Eames is pleasantly buzzed and enjoying himself more than he has in a long time.

“Where’s your new flat?” Mal asks him as she breastfeeds, and Eames wonders if she should really have her baby (Phillipa, Phillipa is the baby’s name) in a bar, even though Somnacin is non-smoking and, ergo, somewhat wholesome.

“Um,” Eames says, and then waves his arms around and gives a sort of embarrassingly vague explanation, because he can’t remember street names. “I know where I live.”

“Is it next to a big glass building?” Mal asks, and Eames nods. Mal grins. “Cobb! Eames lives next to Cobol!”

Cobb comes over, and Mal snags his beer bottle from his hand and takes a swig. Which, okay, she should really be breastfeeding and drinking beer at the same time? But Eames knows nothing about children.

“That’s where we work,” Cobb says, nodding between himself and Mal.

“Worked,” Mal says, nodding towards the babe latched to her chest. “I’m on maternity leave. I can’t believe you didn’t know! Yusuf, why didn’t you tell us Eames’ new place was next to Cobol?”

“I didn’t realize,” says Yusuf, and he’s looking at Eames thoughtfully.

“You’ll need to stop by some time,” Cobb says. “I could introduce you to some people.”

Eames emphaticly does not want to be introduced to some people.

“Sure,” Eames says, and then he pretends he has to leave before they can actually plan anything.

Yusuf calls Eames up when the bar closes, which is to say: Yusuf calls Eames up at 4am. Eames doesn’t know why he answered, except he just woke up and vulnerable.

“It’s four in the morning,” he says, hitting his alarm clock to light it up.

“Eames,” Yusuf says. “Arthur works at Cobol.”

“I know,” Eames says. As soon as he does, he realizes he should’ve lied.

“I knew you knew!” Yusuf crows. “You’re spying on him, aren’t you? You’re a strange and filthy man who is afraid to start a relationship and spies on innocent young architects in neighboring buildings.”

“Don’t make it sound so tawdry,” Eames says. “He’s old enough to drink scotch.”

“You should write a novel about this. It could be called...‘A Room With a View,’” Yusuf says, and Eames has finally gathered enough wits to hang up.

Yusuf calls him back when it’s actually morning.

“I thought ‘A Room With a View’ was clever,” he says. “Though ‘He’s Old Enough to Drink Scotch’ is also a valid option.”

“Shut up, Yusuf,” Eames says, but doesn’t bother hanging up because his novel is going all to crap, and he’s been working on it for an hours now without going anywhere at all, and he never sells as much as Nora Roberts, anyway, and she’s actually probably better than him, and his mother says it’s because Eames doesn’t have enough love in his life, which is the sort of things mothers who are desperate for grandchildren say.

“I hate my job,” Eames tells Yusuf.

“Ah, is your novel reaching it’s climax?” Yusuf asks, and Eames can hear him making a badum-ching sound by banging on something in the background. “Well, young padawan--”

“Ugh,” Eames cuts him off. “Why do I even talk to you?”

“Because I’m your best friend?” Yusuf offers, and Eames doesn’t have anything to say to that, because of course Yusuf is right.

“It’s not the climax of the novel, anyway,” Eames says. “I’m only about halfway.”

“Halfway!” Yusuf exclaims. “That’s great! You should come out for drinks tonight.”

“Go back to sleep, Yusuf,” Eames says.

“Maybe for your next novel you should go back to gay smut,” Yusuf suggests. “I think you were happier when you were writing gay smut.”

“But it made less money.”

“But it got better reviews. What did Out write about you?”

“Please don’t. Please don’t quote that review.”

“A modern ‘Pride and Prejudice’ for the LGBT community,” Yusuf continues. “That’s it.”

Eames groans into the phone.

“And then you sold out,” Yusuf says. “Albeit under a psuedonym.”

“Shut up shut up shut up,” Eames says.

“‘I can’t believe the queer community is so desperate for gay smut that they compared ‘Dream a Little Bigger’ to Jane Austen,’” Yusuf says in bad imitation of an upper-crust British accent. “That’s what you said.”

“I hate you,” Eames says, and hangs up, which is how his phone conversations with Yusuf tend to end.

Eames gets dressed in jeans and a wife-beater, because he’s not going to make the boxer mistake again but it is hot, damnit, and goes out to smoke a cigarette on the fire escape, fuck everything. Arthur’s there, in his office, and Eames looks at the curve of the other man’s back until the cigarette’s gone, and then he drops it into a dumpster below and goes inside.

The phone rings, and it’s a number he doesn’t recognize.

“Charles Eames,” he says.

“Eames!” it’s a voice Eames can’t place, but apparently someone who knows him. “Do you have air conditioning over there?”

“No,” Eames says. “But I don’t usually have air conditioning.”

“Damnit. I was going to ask if I could bring my laptop over from Cobol. It’s fucking hot in here. I think it’s a brown out.”

So Cobb, then, because it can’t possibly be Arthur.

“Can’t you open one of your multitude of windows?”

“Ugh, I wish,” Cobb says. “Only incrementally.”

“Sounds like shitty architecture to me,” Eames says, and Cobb laughs.

“Come see me when you win a Pritzker, and then we’ll talk. Anyway, some of us have real jobs. Later Eames.”

Arthur’s still there when the sun goes down, like he usually is, and after everyone else leaves he takes off his tie and moves over to his drafting table. Not that Eames is watching.

Until Arthur takes off his waistcoat, and starts to unbutton his shirt. Then Eames is watching, damnit, because Arthur isn’t wearing an undershirt and that’s more skin than Eames has seen in months.

And, shit, Arthur has got to know he’s there, because it’s dark outside and Eames’ light is on, and Eames isn’t sure if he even cares.

And then Arthur turns and looks at Eames, directly at him, and Eames is so busy looking at his face that he isn’t fully aware when Arthur’s trousers drop to the floor.

This is something, Eames thinks. Something is happening here. Eames pulls his chair over to the window, and Arthur is watching him, and he peels of his shirt over his head, and Arthur smiles and fucking dimples, and turns his desk chair around so it’s facing the window, and sits down and sticks his hand down his pants.

There is a pregnant moment, and Eames can feel Arthur breathing even though he’s separated from Eames by a screen and a pane of glass and ten feet of air, and then Eames does likewise.

Eames comes like a teenager, and after Arthur leaves that night he takes a cold shower.

“He didn’t come tonight,” Yusuf says, when he calls.

Arthur doesn’t come to work the next day, either, which means something in the same way masturbating together through windows means something, but Eames really, really isn’t sure what.

And then Yusuf calls him, a little after half past ten.

“His favorite book is ‘Dream a Little Bigger.’”

Eames was young and proud when ‘Dream’ was published, and his picture’s on the back flap.

This means something, fucking for sure.

Eames calls Cobb.

“Someone named Arthur works at Cobol,” Eames says.

“Finally,” Cobb says, which raises a lot of questions Eames doesn’t have time to ask because Cobb gives him Arthur’s address, just like that.

It’s ten blocks away. Eames doesn't drive, but is there in five minutes anyway.

“It’s Charles Eames,” he says to Apartment 2B through the intercom.

“Finally,” Arthur says, and buzzes him up.