Leon/The Professional AU (Part 4/6)
Title: No One Has a Photo of This Man
Author: sneaqui
Team: Angst
Prompts: Innocence, Home
Word Count: 4200 (this part)
Rating: PG-13 (this part)
Warnings: (in future parts) Major character death, sexual situations involving a minor
Beta-ed by metacheese
Part I // Part II // Part III
Eames sleeps on the uncomfortable, mid-century modern sofa in the living room, because that’s where the TV is. The soft blue glow of the screen and the murmur of mindless voices helps to calm him at night, when the absence of sound and movement would otherwise let in all the things he tries to keep from his mind.
It takes him two or three hours to fall asleep. Always. Regardless of what he’s done to try and tire himself out during the day.
He’s unusually keyed up the night after his conversation with Arthur, unsure as to whether he should be excited or nervous about the possibility of Arthur teaching him how to fight.
That night, he lays down on the couch, pulls the blanket that Arthur bought for him up to his chin and closes his eyes around eleven p.m. He shifts and stirs and gets up to take a piss several times before sleep finally pulls his thoughts away from him sometime during the small hours of the following day.
He wakes up in a panic that morning at seven a.m. when the couch begins to shake underneath him. His first thought is, Earthquake. He does the logical thing and keeps his eyes closed, remains perfectly still and wishes it to subside.
The shaking comes again, accompanied by Arthur’s voice. “Eames. C’mon. Get up.”
Eames pokes his head out of the top of the blanket, blinks against the soft morning light flooding the living room. “Arthur? What the fuck is going on?”
Arthur takes hold of the blanket and pulls it off of him, tosses it over the back of the couch. “It’s time for your first lesson.” He makes his way back into the kitchen, throwing his voice over his shoulder. “Put on some clothes. And brush your teeth.”
Five minutes later Eames finds himself sitting in the middle of the rug in the living room, still half-asleep. He picks the crusts from the corners of his eyes, balls them up and flicks them out into the room’s periphery.
Arthur kneels down on the floor in front of him. “How many push-ups can you do?”
Eames shrugs, lies, “I dunno... ‘bout fifty, I guess?”
Arthur has him do fifty. And then an extra ten.
Eames punctuates his last five pushes with loud grunts, gravity pulling the sweat down his face until it’s dripping off the tip of his nose. He collapses after the final push, rolls over onto his back, throws an arm over his eyes. “Fuck me.”
Arthur walks in from the kitchen and tosses a towel at him.
“Cheers,” Eames exhales heavily, scrubs at his forehead and the nape of his neck.
Arthur crouches down in front of him. “Alright. Time for sit ups. Feet flat on the floor.” Eames does as he’s told, and Arthur leans forward to cover the tops of Eames’s feet with his hands.
Arthur places his hands on Eames’s body while he works in order to correct his posture. He puts the tips of his fingers on Eames’s shoulder (“Relax your shoulders. Don’t use them to pull yourself up.”), the side of his palm just below his pectoral (“Don’t use anything from here up to the top of your head.”), his entire hand across Eames’s abs (“Use this. This is what you’re trying to work. Pretend that my hand is a weight, and you’re trying to push it off.”). His eyes and his voice deep and demanding, pulling Eames up and toward him.
Arthur is somewhat childlike in his inability to recognize himself as an object of desire, so Eames almost feels guilty for the heat that creeps down his spine and his belly when Arthur has his eyes and his hands on him. But guilt won’t stop him from having a very satisfying wank in the shower once this is over.
An hour later, all erotic thoughts are absent from his mind. He’s curled up on his side in the middle of the living room, trying to breathe the pain out through his teeth.
He’s pretty sure that Arthur made up a few of those exercises just to have a laugh at him. He can’t imagine ever having to use that one muscle in his lower back.
Arthur appears at his side, munching on an apple. “You alright?”
Eames winces his way up to a sitting position, legs out in front of him and head flopping forward. “I feel like I lost a fight to a lorry.”
Arthur smiles as he chews. “Sounds like your sense of humor is intact. That’s good. That’ll get you through a lot of seemingly hopeless situations.”
Eames points a wilted grin in his direction. “So how is it that you’re still alive?”
Arthur puts the apple between his teeth, freeing his hand so that he can thwack Eames lightly on the side of the head. Eames snickers and lets Arthur push his torso down towards his legs, a hand between his shoulder blades. “Time to stretch. Bend over.”
Eames has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from giggling.
Arthur then proceeds to twist Eames into several embarrassing positions. At one point, he’s got Eames on his back, his legs splayed wide open, knees and ankles a few inches off the ground. Arthur tries to put his hands on the insides of Eames’s thighs to help him stretch. Eames pushes them away roughly. “I think I can handle this one by myself, Arthur.”
Arthur puts his hands up. “Suit yourself.”
Eames attempts to make conversation while he’s lying there looking like an un-stuffed turkey. “Where did you learn all these odd forms of torture?”
“These are ancient exercises passed down to me from my ancestors, all of them trained killers.”
Eames cranes his neck up to look at him. “Really?”
Arthur laughs softly and shakes his head. “No. Not really. Most of them I learned from the guy who taught me. The rest I got from various teachers and some of the guys that I work with.”
“Who’s the guy that taught you?”
Arthur is sitting across from Eames on the surface of the coffee table, elbows on his knees and hands falling between his legs. He rubs the tips of his fingers together, looks down at them, seeming to contemplate whether or not to tell Eames the truth. He looks back up at Eames once he’s reached a decision. “My father.”
Eames’s eyebrows shoot up, and he rolls forward to a sitting position. “Really.”
“It’s not- It’s wasn’t...” Arthur tries to explain, suddenly looking much younger in his shy and abortive gestures than Eames has ever seen him. At last he says decisively, “It’s a long story.”
Eames nods, wipes the sweat from his upper lip with the side of his hand. “It always is, isn’t it?” He looks down at his feet and fiddles with his shoelaces. “We’ll save the stories about our odd relationships with our fathers for another time, yeah?”
Arthur nods quickly. He gets up and walks over to a small canvas bag that he brought into the room earlier. “Alright. Time for the jump rope.”
Eames falls on to his back and lets out a high-pitched whine like a small animal in pain.
He doesn’t even have the energy to jerk off in the shower once they’re done.
The next day, Arthur wakes him up at seven again to go for a walk.
“This is ridiculous. Why do you have to wake me up at seven a.m.? I mean, a run I could understand. But we can take a stroll around the neighborhood at literally any time.”
Arthur answers him from the kitchen where he’s cracking eggs into a metal bowl. “One: you can’t run for very long when you’re a pack-a-day smoker-”
Eames comes into the kitchen and leans against the door frame, still clad only in his boxers. He crosses his arms over his bare chest, a proud grin on his face and a disheveled pile of blonde hair atop his head. “I haven’t been smoking as much. Have you noticed? I’m down to less than ten a day.”
Arthur is not impressed. “Fewer than ten a day,” he corrects him. “And you’re gonna have to get down to none before you start running.”
Eames lets out a petulant groan and sits down at the kitchen table.
“Two,” Arthur continues, “I’m not getting you up at seven in the morning just for kicks. I’m doing it because I want us to be on the same schedule. It disturbs my sleep when you’re shuffling around the house at two a.m.” He puts a plate full of scrambled eggs and a single piece of wheat toast down in front of Eames.
Eames smears butter all over his toast and takes a loud bite. “I’ve an idea for how you could solve that little problem: not sleep in a chair.”
Arthur doesn’t even turn from where he’s pushing his own eggs around in the pan with a spatula. He just smiles and flicks a glob of egg over his shoulder in Eames’s direction. It lands precisely in the middle of Eames’s forehead. “Oi!”
They go for a walk, heading south towards the Theater District where the buildings and the spaces between them become wider. Past the 10 freeway where the skyscrapers give way to dilapidated Victorian homes. Overgrown front yards and peeling blue trim. Uncollected newspapers littering front walkways.
At some point, Eames speaks up. “We should probably turn around before we get too far south, yeah? We keep going like this, and we’ll end up in the jungle.”
Arthur peers over at him but keeps walking. “The jungle?”
“South Central,” Eames explains. He widens his stance, puffs his chest out a bit and proceeds to recite a series of words in a lazy, steady rhythm. “Then we played bones, and I'm yellin domino! Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A. Today was a good day.”
Arthur looks over at Eames who’s nodding his head to a beat that only he can hear. “Is that a... rap?”
Eames chuckles. “Fuck, mate. You need to get out more. That song is older than I am.”
Arthur looks down at his boots where they’re hitting the pavement. “I get out.”
“No you don’t. I haven’t seen you leave the house to do anything other than buy groceries for the past three weeks.”
Arthur kicks a stone out of his path. “So?”
“So surely I’m not that enthralling of a human being.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Eames. Your performance of ‘When Doves Cry’ in the shower the other day was really something.”
“You heard that?”
“It’s a small apartment.”
“Damn.” Eames jumps down off the sidewalk to grab a glass bottle out of the street and tosses it toward a nearby chain link fence. “But there are things that you do just for fun, yeah? Just ‘cause you enjoy doing them? Aside from cleaning your guns.”
“Yes, Eames. Despite what you may think, I am, in fact, human.”
“So what do you do?”
Arthur shrugs. “I dunno. Nothing... really interesting.”
“You must find it interesting. Otherwise you wouldn’t do it. So, what? What do you do with your free time when you’re not busy taking care of sad orphans?”
Eames watches Arthur as he lowers his head and purses his lips in thought, his spine and his shoulders curving inward in an uncharacteristically shy posture.
Arthur shrugs. “I just... go places. Around the city.”
“Where do you go?”
Arthur stops walking abruptly and turns to Eames, his spine straightening out so he can look down at him. “You’re really not gonna drop this are you?”
Eames smiles. “No, I’m not.”
Arthur nods, turns his head in the direction they’ve been walking. “Alright,” he sighs. “Keep walking this way. I’ll show you.”
Twenty minutes later, they come to a four-laned avenue cut down the middle by train tracks. Beyond it is a long, white building pocked with a series of small windows. In front of it is a behemoth bronze sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus rex attempting to sideswipe a Triceratops.
Eames lets out a low, appreciative whistle. “Is this, like, a museum or something?”
“This is the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County,” Arthur says almost proudly.
“So they got dinosaurs and stuff like that?”
“Yes.”
Eames smiles, bobs his head. “Safe.”
They step inside the building and into a low-lit rotunda. At its center stands the fossilized version of the dinosaur sculpture out front. Ancient fauna engaged in a futile fight for survival. Futile because, regardless of the outcome, both animals as well as their kin are all long-dead.
Eames follows Arthur through a series of dark, low-ceilinged galleries. The only light comes from wide windows that look out onto sunny, artificial landscapes. Dioramas filled with giant, glass-eyed animals killed and stuffed half a century ago and put back into their natural habitats.
A couple of rooms in, Eames hunches his shoulders and pulls his jacket closed, crosses his arms across his chest. “Is the whole museum like this? It’s starting to creep me out.”
Arthur smiles into the empty, reflective eyes of a lowland gorilla. “Really? I like it.”
Eames sneaks away a few minutes later. Arthur either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
Eames follows a small, nuclear family into a tall, brightly-lit room filled with the fossils of weird, ancient mammals. The atmosphere in here is much more to his liking. Cleaner and safer. The lines between science and morality more clearly defined.
He studies every skeleton, reads every plaque and pushes every button, ignoring the line of people that begins to form behind him. Excitable children and strung-out parents with aching feet.
Once finished, he sits and stares at the skeleton of a Paleoparadoxia for a full ten minutes; then he goes in search of Arthur.
Eames finds him in one of the rooms off the main rotunda. It’s filled with glittering gems and dull rocks, and Arthur is the only person in the room.
Eames stands in the entryway for a couple minutes and observes him gazing in wonder at the display in front of him. Lips parted and eyes illuminated, revealing the rich mahogany brown of his irises. His hands are folded neatly in front of him, and his neck is craned forward, nose almost touching the glass that surrounds a small ribbon of silver, the shape of a bird in flight. As unconscious of its own beauty as the man standing in front of it.
Eames has never met someone so honest as Arthur. He’s dangerous is so many ways but safe in all the ways that really matter. He lacks the artifice and ulterior motives that dictate the behavior of almost every other person that Eames has ever met.
Eames walks towards him slowly, not wanting to interrupt his reverie.
Arthur hears him approach, of course, and smiles, honestly happy.
Eames can’t help but smile back. “Of course you would be in the most boring room in the museum.”
“It’s not boring,” Arthur says, still smiling. “We have as much in common with the rocks in here as we do with the mammals out there.”
Eames leans forward to look at the silver wire, his posture mimicking Arthur’s. “How’s that?”
Arthur turns to face him, their faces now mere inches apart. He whispers, as if imparting to Eames an important secret. “Did you know that there’s silver in our bodies?”
“You mean, like, right now?”
“I mean on an atomic level. Most of the atoms in the human body are composed of five chemical elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and calcium.” Arthur’s smile grows wider. “But about half of all the other elements are in there too. Silver, gold, copper, chlorine, mercury, tin, manganese, sulfur...”
Eames chews on his bottom lip. “How is that possible?”
“It’s because we all come from the same place.”
Eames turns to look at him. “And where’s that?”
Arthur grins so wide that his dimples appear. “The stars.”
As the days pass, Arthur becomes both more and less of an enigma to Eames.
His habits reveal him to be both charmingly and frustratingly human. Eames finds it endearing that Arthur mumbles in his sleep and gets cranky on days when it’s cloudy but not raining.
Eames finds it less endearing that Arthur is a complete slob. He neglects to take his dirty clothes out of the bathroom once he’s finished showering and leaves his dishes out on the counter instead of washing them or even putting them in the sink.
Their differing standards of cleanliness lead to a couple of screaming arguments. A cockroach crawls out of the bathtub drain one day just after Eames has finished showering. He throws a towel around his waist and marches out of the bathroom, water dripping down his body and leaving puddles on the floor. Puddles that he will later have to clean up.
He finds Arthur sitting in his chair, reading Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Eames goes off on him.
The argument ends with Arthur saying to Eames, heavy breath flaring his nostrils, “No one’s forcing you to stay here. Find someone else to live with if you find me so disgusting.”
Eames storms out of the room, throws a sweatshirt and some baggy jeans on without even bothering to dry himself off properly. He slams the door on his way out, as he always does. And as always, he returns a couple hours later.
He walks past Arthur and into the apartment without a word.
Arthur is the first to break the silence. “You don’t smell like smoke,” he says softly.
Eames turns to look at him, nods and holds his chin up defiantly, “Haven’t had a cig in three days.”
Arthur regards him silently for a moment and then allows himself a small smile. “Good.” He clears his throat. “That’s great. You should be proud of yourself.”
Eames swallows the sudden urge to ask, Are you proud of me? Instead he nods and turns to walk into the living room.
Just then Arthur speaks up, “I’m sorry about what I said earlier.” Eames turns around, but Arthur is pointedly avoiding his gaze. “It was... unnecessarily mean.”
Eames puts his hands in his pockets, leans against the entryway. “I’m sorry too,” he sighs. “I don’t know why I yelled at you like that.” He looks down at the floor and pulls his bottom lip between his teeth. “It’s always the little things that set you off, isn’t it? It’s never the big thing that you’re actually upset about.”
“What are you actually upset about?” Arthur asks him.
Eames keeps his eyes on the floor. “It’s her birthday tomorrow. Or it would be, rather... if she were still...”
“Your sister?”
Eames nods.
Arthur shifts his weight nervously from one foot to the other, remains silent.
Eames continues, “You know what’s really fucked up? Sometimes... sometimes I used to wish that they’d all just disappear. Just pack up and take off. Leave me alone.”
“Why-” Arthur clears his throat. “Why would you want to be left alone?”
“I dunno... It’s just- It’s hard work taking care of teenage girl and a drunk mother.” Eames breathes out a mirthless laugh. “Guess I got my wish.”
“Eames. You’re not- Everyone has those thoughts.”
Eames looks up at him. “Do they?”
Arthur opens his mouth, closes it, clears his throat. “My... my dad died when I was nineteen. And there was... there was a part of me that was relieved. Because it meant that I could be myself. In a way that I wasn’t able to be when he was around.”
Eames considers this and then says, “I feel that way sometimes. I want to be someone different than I was before. Someone stronger. Someone more capable. Someone who... doesn’t just let things happen.”
“You can be whoever you want to be, Eames,” Arthur assures him. “But just- Just do me a favor?”
Eames lifts his eyebrows at him.
Arthur continues. “Don’t try to be me.”
Eames shakes his head. “I don’t- I don’t want to be you, Arthur.”
Arthur’s features fall minutely at Eames’s words. He tries to hide it by looking down at the floor.
Eames clarifies. “I’m perfectly happy just to be around you.”
Arthur’s gaze snaps up to catch Eames’s eyes, but Eames is already turning away from him to walk into the other room. He pauses on his way out, turns his head over his shoulder and says, “You’re lovely, Arthur. I hope you realize that.” He doesn’t wait for Arthur to respond, just walks into the living room and collapses on the couch in his clothes.
Arthur stays true to his word, and the next day, he takes Eames on a run.
The day after that, he begins to teach Eames how to fight.
They’re standing in the middle of the living room, the couch and the mattress that Arthur recently bought for him pushed off to the side. Arthur has taped several layers of blankets to the floor in lieu of mats.
Eames stands facing him, shoulders hunched and fists up.
Arthur quirks an eyebrow at him, smiles. “Eames, don’t get ahead of yourself. Put your fists down.”
Eames stares at him for a moment and then drops his hands.
Arthur clears his throat. “Okay. Basics.” He gestures to Eames’s legs. “I noticed you had your knees locked. Don’t do that.”
Eames nods. “Okay.”
Arthur makes several aborted gestures with his hands, opens his mouth to speak and then closes it. “Okay. The way you need to think about it is...” Arthur trails off, stares up at the ceiling for a moment before asking Eames, “Do you dance?”
“What?”
“Do you dance? You know... go out to places with your friends or whatever...”
Eames shrugs. “I have. Yeah.”
“Show me how you stand when you’re getting ready to dance.”
Eames thinks for a moment, and then he hunches his shoulders a bit, curves his spine and bends his knees in a shallow plie.
“Good!” Arthur says. “That’s good. See, what you’re trying to do is keep your muscles relaxed but at the ready. Just like with dancing, you never want to allow your muscles to tense up completely. You need to be ready in case your opponent attempts to throw you off balance. Loss of balance and your center of gravity is just as dangerous as a forceful hit. Does that make sense?”
Eames smiles, nods. “Yeah. Yeah, it does, actually.”
“Okay. Now I’m going to give you an example.”
Eames’s face lights up. “Yeah?”
Arthur chuckles. “I thought you’d like that.” Arthur doesn’t change his stance except to take his hands out of his pockets. “Throw a punch at me.”
Eames nods, brings his fists up and begins to bounce on the balls of his toes a bit. “Alright. You ready?”
“Yes, Eames. I’m ready.”
Eames doesn’t even get the chance to fully extend his arm before he feels a dull ache in his forearm, and his right leg disappears from underneath him.
He finds himself on his back almost instantly, staring up at Arthur’s back.
Arthur turns around and smiles down at him. “That is the easiest and least dangerous way I could take you down.”
“Huh.” Eames considers what just occurred from his supine position. “Do you think you could show me again? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“Of course. I’ll show you one more time. Slower. And then you get another lecture on proper breath control.”
Eames bounces up to standing, grins. “I look forward to it.”
The next day, Eames wakes up to see Arthur standing at the kitchen table, shutting the clasps on his leather case. He’s wearing his long gray coat, and his hair is slicked back.
He looks up when Eames enters the room. He rubs his hands together, looks down at the floor, his expression almost apologetic. “I... I have some things that I need to take care of.”
Eames nods. “Alright. D’you think I should go for a run today?”
Arthur looks up at him, and his features relax a bit. “Yeah... yeah, actually, why don’t you just go for a walk. Your muscles could use the rest.”
“Alright.” Eames crosses his arms over his chest. “Be careful, yeah?”
Arthur stares at him for a moment, opens his mouth to say something and then shuts it. He grabs his case and walks out the door, closing it softly behind him.
Eames walks a two-mile loop through downtown. On his way back to the apartment, he stops at a corner store to pick up a carton of milk and some toilet paper.
He’s waiting in line to pay, and his eyes catch on a stack of Los Angeles Times newspapers near the counter. He walks closer to check out the headlines, and his breath catches in his throat when he sees the photo on the front page.
It’s a picture of a man shaking hands with a line of police officers in uniform. He has pale skin and eyes the color of ice, and he looks a bit more composed than the last time Arthur saw him. Just the sight of him standing there smiling as if he didn’t just murder a thirteen-year-old girl a couple of weeks ago turns the blood in Eames’s veins to fire.
Eames’ eyes skim down to the caption. They catch on the name Detective Robert Fischer.
Author: sneaqui
Team: Angst
Prompts: Innocence, Home
Word Count: 4200 (this part)
Rating: PG-13 (this part)
Warnings: (in future parts) Major character death, sexual situations involving a minor
Beta-ed by metacheese
Part I // Part II // Part III
Eames sleeps on the uncomfortable, mid-century modern sofa in the living room, because that’s where the TV is. The soft blue glow of the screen and the murmur of mindless voices helps to calm him at night, when the absence of sound and movement would otherwise let in all the things he tries to keep from his mind.
It takes him two or three hours to fall asleep. Always. Regardless of what he’s done to try and tire himself out during the day.
He’s unusually keyed up the night after his conversation with Arthur, unsure as to whether he should be excited or nervous about the possibility of Arthur teaching him how to fight.
That night, he lays down on the couch, pulls the blanket that Arthur bought for him up to his chin and closes his eyes around eleven p.m. He shifts and stirs and gets up to take a piss several times before sleep finally pulls his thoughts away from him sometime during the small hours of the following day.
He wakes up in a panic that morning at seven a.m. when the couch begins to shake underneath him. His first thought is, Earthquake. He does the logical thing and keeps his eyes closed, remains perfectly still and wishes it to subside.
The shaking comes again, accompanied by Arthur’s voice. “Eames. C’mon. Get up.”
Eames pokes his head out of the top of the blanket, blinks against the soft morning light flooding the living room. “Arthur? What the fuck is going on?”
Arthur takes hold of the blanket and pulls it off of him, tosses it over the back of the couch. “It’s time for your first lesson.” He makes his way back into the kitchen, throwing his voice over his shoulder. “Put on some clothes. And brush your teeth.”
Five minutes later Eames finds himself sitting in the middle of the rug in the living room, still half-asleep. He picks the crusts from the corners of his eyes, balls them up and flicks them out into the room’s periphery.
Arthur kneels down on the floor in front of him. “How many push-ups can you do?”
Eames shrugs, lies, “I dunno... ‘bout fifty, I guess?”
Arthur has him do fifty. And then an extra ten.
Eames punctuates his last five pushes with loud grunts, gravity pulling the sweat down his face until it’s dripping off the tip of his nose. He collapses after the final push, rolls over onto his back, throws an arm over his eyes. “Fuck me.”
Arthur walks in from the kitchen and tosses a towel at him.
“Cheers,” Eames exhales heavily, scrubs at his forehead and the nape of his neck.
Arthur crouches down in front of him. “Alright. Time for sit ups. Feet flat on the floor.” Eames does as he’s told, and Arthur leans forward to cover the tops of Eames’s feet with his hands.
Arthur places his hands on Eames’s body while he works in order to correct his posture. He puts the tips of his fingers on Eames’s shoulder (“Relax your shoulders. Don’t use them to pull yourself up.”), the side of his palm just below his pectoral (“Don’t use anything from here up to the top of your head.”), his entire hand across Eames’s abs (“Use this. This is what you’re trying to work. Pretend that my hand is a weight, and you’re trying to push it off.”). His eyes and his voice deep and demanding, pulling Eames up and toward him.
Arthur is somewhat childlike in his inability to recognize himself as an object of desire, so Eames almost feels guilty for the heat that creeps down his spine and his belly when Arthur has his eyes and his hands on him. But guilt won’t stop him from having a very satisfying wank in the shower once this is over.
An hour later, all erotic thoughts are absent from his mind. He’s curled up on his side in the middle of the living room, trying to breathe the pain out through his teeth.
He’s pretty sure that Arthur made up a few of those exercises just to have a laugh at him. He can’t imagine ever having to use that one muscle in his lower back.
Arthur appears at his side, munching on an apple. “You alright?”
Eames winces his way up to a sitting position, legs out in front of him and head flopping forward. “I feel like I lost a fight to a lorry.”
Arthur smiles as he chews. “Sounds like your sense of humor is intact. That’s good. That’ll get you through a lot of seemingly hopeless situations.”
Eames points a wilted grin in his direction. “So how is it that you’re still alive?”
Arthur puts the apple between his teeth, freeing his hand so that he can thwack Eames lightly on the side of the head. Eames snickers and lets Arthur push his torso down towards his legs, a hand between his shoulder blades. “Time to stretch. Bend over.”
Eames has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from giggling.
Arthur then proceeds to twist Eames into several embarrassing positions. At one point, he’s got Eames on his back, his legs splayed wide open, knees and ankles a few inches off the ground. Arthur tries to put his hands on the insides of Eames’s thighs to help him stretch. Eames pushes them away roughly. “I think I can handle this one by myself, Arthur.”
Arthur puts his hands up. “Suit yourself.”
Eames attempts to make conversation while he’s lying there looking like an un-stuffed turkey. “Where did you learn all these odd forms of torture?”
“These are ancient exercises passed down to me from my ancestors, all of them trained killers.”
Eames cranes his neck up to look at him. “Really?”
Arthur laughs softly and shakes his head. “No. Not really. Most of them I learned from the guy who taught me. The rest I got from various teachers and some of the guys that I work with.”
“Who’s the guy that taught you?”
Arthur is sitting across from Eames on the surface of the coffee table, elbows on his knees and hands falling between his legs. He rubs the tips of his fingers together, looks down at them, seeming to contemplate whether or not to tell Eames the truth. He looks back up at Eames once he’s reached a decision. “My father.”
Eames’s eyebrows shoot up, and he rolls forward to a sitting position. “Really.”
“It’s not- It’s wasn’t...” Arthur tries to explain, suddenly looking much younger in his shy and abortive gestures than Eames has ever seen him. At last he says decisively, “It’s a long story.”
Eames nods, wipes the sweat from his upper lip with the side of his hand. “It always is, isn’t it?” He looks down at his feet and fiddles with his shoelaces. “We’ll save the stories about our odd relationships with our fathers for another time, yeah?”
Arthur nods quickly. He gets up and walks over to a small canvas bag that he brought into the room earlier. “Alright. Time for the jump rope.”
Eames falls on to his back and lets out a high-pitched whine like a small animal in pain.
He doesn’t even have the energy to jerk off in the shower once they’re done.
The next day, Arthur wakes him up at seven again to go for a walk.
“This is ridiculous. Why do you have to wake me up at seven a.m.? I mean, a run I could understand. But we can take a stroll around the neighborhood at literally any time.”
Arthur answers him from the kitchen where he’s cracking eggs into a metal bowl. “One: you can’t run for very long when you’re a pack-a-day smoker-”
Eames comes into the kitchen and leans against the door frame, still clad only in his boxers. He crosses his arms over his bare chest, a proud grin on his face and a disheveled pile of blonde hair atop his head. “I haven’t been smoking as much. Have you noticed? I’m down to less than ten a day.”
Arthur is not impressed. “Fewer than ten a day,” he corrects him. “And you’re gonna have to get down to none before you start running.”
Eames lets out a petulant groan and sits down at the kitchen table.
“Two,” Arthur continues, “I’m not getting you up at seven in the morning just for kicks. I’m doing it because I want us to be on the same schedule. It disturbs my sleep when you’re shuffling around the house at two a.m.” He puts a plate full of scrambled eggs and a single piece of wheat toast down in front of Eames.
Eames smears butter all over his toast and takes a loud bite. “I’ve an idea for how you could solve that little problem: not sleep in a chair.”
Arthur doesn’t even turn from where he’s pushing his own eggs around in the pan with a spatula. He just smiles and flicks a glob of egg over his shoulder in Eames’s direction. It lands precisely in the middle of Eames’s forehead. “Oi!”
They go for a walk, heading south towards the Theater District where the buildings and the spaces between them become wider. Past the 10 freeway where the skyscrapers give way to dilapidated Victorian homes. Overgrown front yards and peeling blue trim. Uncollected newspapers littering front walkways.
At some point, Eames speaks up. “We should probably turn around before we get too far south, yeah? We keep going like this, and we’ll end up in the jungle.”
Arthur peers over at him but keeps walking. “The jungle?”
“South Central,” Eames explains. He widens his stance, puffs his chest out a bit and proceeds to recite a series of words in a lazy, steady rhythm. “Then we played bones, and I'm yellin domino! Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A. Today was a good day.”
Arthur looks over at Eames who’s nodding his head to a beat that only he can hear. “Is that a... rap?”
Eames chuckles. “Fuck, mate. You need to get out more. That song is older than I am.”
Arthur looks down at his boots where they’re hitting the pavement. “I get out.”
“No you don’t. I haven’t seen you leave the house to do anything other than buy groceries for the past three weeks.”
Arthur kicks a stone out of his path. “So?”
“So surely I’m not that enthralling of a human being.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Eames. Your performance of ‘When Doves Cry’ in the shower the other day was really something.”
“You heard that?”
“It’s a small apartment.”
“Damn.” Eames jumps down off the sidewalk to grab a glass bottle out of the street and tosses it toward a nearby chain link fence. “But there are things that you do just for fun, yeah? Just ‘cause you enjoy doing them? Aside from cleaning your guns.”
“Yes, Eames. Despite what you may think, I am, in fact, human.”
“So what do you do?”
Arthur shrugs. “I dunno. Nothing... really interesting.”
“You must find it interesting. Otherwise you wouldn’t do it. So, what? What do you do with your free time when you’re not busy taking care of sad orphans?”
Eames watches Arthur as he lowers his head and purses his lips in thought, his spine and his shoulders curving inward in an uncharacteristically shy posture.
Arthur shrugs. “I just... go places. Around the city.”
“Where do you go?”
Arthur stops walking abruptly and turns to Eames, his spine straightening out so he can look down at him. “You’re really not gonna drop this are you?”
Eames smiles. “No, I’m not.”
Arthur nods, turns his head in the direction they’ve been walking. “Alright,” he sighs. “Keep walking this way. I’ll show you.”
Twenty minutes later, they come to a four-laned avenue cut down the middle by train tracks. Beyond it is a long, white building pocked with a series of small windows. In front of it is a behemoth bronze sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus rex attempting to sideswipe a Triceratops.
Eames lets out a low, appreciative whistle. “Is this, like, a museum or something?”
“This is the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County,” Arthur says almost proudly.
“So they got dinosaurs and stuff like that?”
“Yes.”
Eames smiles, bobs his head. “Safe.”
They step inside the building and into a low-lit rotunda. At its center stands the fossilized version of the dinosaur sculpture out front. Ancient fauna engaged in a futile fight for survival. Futile because, regardless of the outcome, both animals as well as their kin are all long-dead.
Eames follows Arthur through a series of dark, low-ceilinged galleries. The only light comes from wide windows that look out onto sunny, artificial landscapes. Dioramas filled with giant, glass-eyed animals killed and stuffed half a century ago and put back into their natural habitats.
A couple of rooms in, Eames hunches his shoulders and pulls his jacket closed, crosses his arms across his chest. “Is the whole museum like this? It’s starting to creep me out.”
Arthur smiles into the empty, reflective eyes of a lowland gorilla. “Really? I like it.”
Eames sneaks away a few minutes later. Arthur either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
Eames follows a small, nuclear family into a tall, brightly-lit room filled with the fossils of weird, ancient mammals. The atmosphere in here is much more to his liking. Cleaner and safer. The lines between science and morality more clearly defined.
He studies every skeleton, reads every plaque and pushes every button, ignoring the line of people that begins to form behind him. Excitable children and strung-out parents with aching feet.
Once finished, he sits and stares at the skeleton of a Paleoparadoxia for a full ten minutes; then he goes in search of Arthur.
Eames finds him in one of the rooms off the main rotunda. It’s filled with glittering gems and dull rocks, and Arthur is the only person in the room.
Eames stands in the entryway for a couple minutes and observes him gazing in wonder at the display in front of him. Lips parted and eyes illuminated, revealing the rich mahogany brown of his irises. His hands are folded neatly in front of him, and his neck is craned forward, nose almost touching the glass that surrounds a small ribbon of silver, the shape of a bird in flight. As unconscious of its own beauty as the man standing in front of it.
Eames has never met someone so honest as Arthur. He’s dangerous is so many ways but safe in all the ways that really matter. He lacks the artifice and ulterior motives that dictate the behavior of almost every other person that Eames has ever met.
Eames walks towards him slowly, not wanting to interrupt his reverie.
Arthur hears him approach, of course, and smiles, honestly happy.
Eames can’t help but smile back. “Of course you would be in the most boring room in the museum.”
“It’s not boring,” Arthur says, still smiling. “We have as much in common with the rocks in here as we do with the mammals out there.”
Eames leans forward to look at the silver wire, his posture mimicking Arthur’s. “How’s that?”
Arthur turns to face him, their faces now mere inches apart. He whispers, as if imparting to Eames an important secret. “Did you know that there’s silver in our bodies?”
“You mean, like, right now?”
“I mean on an atomic level. Most of the atoms in the human body are composed of five chemical elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and calcium.” Arthur’s smile grows wider. “But about half of all the other elements are in there too. Silver, gold, copper, chlorine, mercury, tin, manganese, sulfur...”
Eames chews on his bottom lip. “How is that possible?”
“It’s because we all come from the same place.”
Eames turns to look at him. “And where’s that?”
Arthur grins so wide that his dimples appear. “The stars.”
As the days pass, Arthur becomes both more and less of an enigma to Eames.
His habits reveal him to be both charmingly and frustratingly human. Eames finds it endearing that Arthur mumbles in his sleep and gets cranky on days when it’s cloudy but not raining.
Eames finds it less endearing that Arthur is a complete slob. He neglects to take his dirty clothes out of the bathroom once he’s finished showering and leaves his dishes out on the counter instead of washing them or even putting them in the sink.
Their differing standards of cleanliness lead to a couple of screaming arguments. A cockroach crawls out of the bathtub drain one day just after Eames has finished showering. He throws a towel around his waist and marches out of the bathroom, water dripping down his body and leaving puddles on the floor. Puddles that he will later have to clean up.
He finds Arthur sitting in his chair, reading Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Eames goes off on him.
The argument ends with Arthur saying to Eames, heavy breath flaring his nostrils, “No one’s forcing you to stay here. Find someone else to live with if you find me so disgusting.”
Eames storms out of the room, throws a sweatshirt and some baggy jeans on without even bothering to dry himself off properly. He slams the door on his way out, as he always does. And as always, he returns a couple hours later.
He walks past Arthur and into the apartment without a word.
Arthur is the first to break the silence. “You don’t smell like smoke,” he says softly.
Eames turns to look at him, nods and holds his chin up defiantly, “Haven’t had a cig in three days.”
Arthur regards him silently for a moment and then allows himself a small smile. “Good.” He clears his throat. “That’s great. You should be proud of yourself.”
Eames swallows the sudden urge to ask, Are you proud of me? Instead he nods and turns to walk into the living room.
Just then Arthur speaks up, “I’m sorry about what I said earlier.” Eames turns around, but Arthur is pointedly avoiding his gaze. “It was... unnecessarily mean.”
Eames puts his hands in his pockets, leans against the entryway. “I’m sorry too,” he sighs. “I don’t know why I yelled at you like that.” He looks down at the floor and pulls his bottom lip between his teeth. “It’s always the little things that set you off, isn’t it? It’s never the big thing that you’re actually upset about.”
“What are you actually upset about?” Arthur asks him.
Eames keeps his eyes on the floor. “It’s her birthday tomorrow. Or it would be, rather... if she were still...”
“Your sister?”
Eames nods.
Arthur shifts his weight nervously from one foot to the other, remains silent.
Eames continues, “You know what’s really fucked up? Sometimes... sometimes I used to wish that they’d all just disappear. Just pack up and take off. Leave me alone.”
“Why-” Arthur clears his throat. “Why would you want to be left alone?”
“I dunno... It’s just- It’s hard work taking care of teenage girl and a drunk mother.” Eames breathes out a mirthless laugh. “Guess I got my wish.”
“Eames. You’re not- Everyone has those thoughts.”
Eames looks up at him. “Do they?”
Arthur opens his mouth, closes it, clears his throat. “My... my dad died when I was nineteen. And there was... there was a part of me that was relieved. Because it meant that I could be myself. In a way that I wasn’t able to be when he was around.”
Eames considers this and then says, “I feel that way sometimes. I want to be someone different than I was before. Someone stronger. Someone more capable. Someone who... doesn’t just let things happen.”
“You can be whoever you want to be, Eames,” Arthur assures him. “But just- Just do me a favor?”
Eames lifts his eyebrows at him.
Arthur continues. “Don’t try to be me.”
Eames shakes his head. “I don’t- I don’t want to be you, Arthur.”
Arthur’s features fall minutely at Eames’s words. He tries to hide it by looking down at the floor.
Eames clarifies. “I’m perfectly happy just to be around you.”
Arthur’s gaze snaps up to catch Eames’s eyes, but Eames is already turning away from him to walk into the other room. He pauses on his way out, turns his head over his shoulder and says, “You’re lovely, Arthur. I hope you realize that.” He doesn’t wait for Arthur to respond, just walks into the living room and collapses on the couch in his clothes.
Arthur stays true to his word, and the next day, he takes Eames on a run.
The day after that, he begins to teach Eames how to fight.
They’re standing in the middle of the living room, the couch and the mattress that Arthur recently bought for him pushed off to the side. Arthur has taped several layers of blankets to the floor in lieu of mats.
Eames stands facing him, shoulders hunched and fists up.
Arthur quirks an eyebrow at him, smiles. “Eames, don’t get ahead of yourself. Put your fists down.”
Eames stares at him for a moment and then drops his hands.
Arthur clears his throat. “Okay. Basics.” He gestures to Eames’s legs. “I noticed you had your knees locked. Don’t do that.”
Eames nods. “Okay.”
Arthur makes several aborted gestures with his hands, opens his mouth to speak and then closes it. “Okay. The way you need to think about it is...” Arthur trails off, stares up at the ceiling for a moment before asking Eames, “Do you dance?”
“What?”
“Do you dance? You know... go out to places with your friends or whatever...”
Eames shrugs. “I have. Yeah.”
“Show me how you stand when you’re getting ready to dance.”
Eames thinks for a moment, and then he hunches his shoulders a bit, curves his spine and bends his knees in a shallow plie.
“Good!” Arthur says. “That’s good. See, what you’re trying to do is keep your muscles relaxed but at the ready. Just like with dancing, you never want to allow your muscles to tense up completely. You need to be ready in case your opponent attempts to throw you off balance. Loss of balance and your center of gravity is just as dangerous as a forceful hit. Does that make sense?”
Eames smiles, nods. “Yeah. Yeah, it does, actually.”
“Okay. Now I’m going to give you an example.”
Eames’s face lights up. “Yeah?”
Arthur chuckles. “I thought you’d like that.” Arthur doesn’t change his stance except to take his hands out of his pockets. “Throw a punch at me.”
Eames nods, brings his fists up and begins to bounce on the balls of his toes a bit. “Alright. You ready?”
“Yes, Eames. I’m ready.”
Eames doesn’t even get the chance to fully extend his arm before he feels a dull ache in his forearm, and his right leg disappears from underneath him.
He finds himself on his back almost instantly, staring up at Arthur’s back.
Arthur turns around and smiles down at him. “That is the easiest and least dangerous way I could take you down.”
“Huh.” Eames considers what just occurred from his supine position. “Do you think you could show me again? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“Of course. I’ll show you one more time. Slower. And then you get another lecture on proper breath control.”
Eames bounces up to standing, grins. “I look forward to it.”
The next day, Eames wakes up to see Arthur standing at the kitchen table, shutting the clasps on his leather case. He’s wearing his long gray coat, and his hair is slicked back.
He looks up when Eames enters the room. He rubs his hands together, looks down at the floor, his expression almost apologetic. “I... I have some things that I need to take care of.”
Eames nods. “Alright. D’you think I should go for a run today?”
Arthur looks up at him, and his features relax a bit. “Yeah... yeah, actually, why don’t you just go for a walk. Your muscles could use the rest.”
“Alright.” Eames crosses his arms over his chest. “Be careful, yeah?”
Arthur stares at him for a moment, opens his mouth to say something and then shuts it. He grabs his case and walks out the door, closing it softly behind him.
Eames walks a two-mile loop through downtown. On his way back to the apartment, he stops at a corner store to pick up a carton of milk and some toilet paper.
He’s waiting in line to pay, and his eyes catch on a stack of Los Angeles Times newspapers near the counter. He walks closer to check out the headlines, and his breath catches in his throat when he sees the photo on the front page.
It’s a picture of a man shaking hands with a line of police officers in uniform. He has pale skin and eyes the color of ice, and he looks a bit more composed than the last time Arthur saw him. Just the sight of him standing there smiling as if he didn’t just murder a thirteen-year-old girl a couple of weeks ago turns the blood in Eames’s veins to fire.
Eames’ eyes skim down to the caption. They catch on the name Detective Robert Fischer.