amateur poetry night at Gryffindor house.
Ten True Things
Arthur/Eames, PG, prompt: songfic -" spin me some sad story/ sell me some excuse/ to help me understand the things you do/ 'cause the way you treat your lovers/ well I just can't relate/ well where'd you learn to shoot your gun so straight? (22-20s - Shoot Your Gun)" aka the fill that went pearshaped. ):
1326 words
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one:
that Arthur used to wear his hair long back in his glory days in Columbia, smoke with his hands loose around a cigarette, trying his damnest not to look as dispassionate as he felt, as others felt. He used to read Molière and laugh at mundane jokes made by friends from out of town, art school kids from New Hampshire with their secondhand clothes, who put paint to canvas and believed that beauty could be condensed, bottled like sunlight. But something had been missing, something not found in between the pages of their textbooks and the approving eyes of their teachers, something that Arthur craved with animal ferocity. Something dark, dramatic.
two:
he met Cobb during his last year in Columbia at a lecture entitled The Five Thousand Year Leap: Twenty-Eight Great Ideas That Are Changing the World. The first idea that was changing the world was dreamsharing and Cobb prepared a slideshow and orated with pomp and purpose, gesturing with his hands like a politician or a televangelist, this is good bread, eat and be full. In the end, he addressed the audience, addressed Arthur directly, Arthur felt. Are you willing to take risks for the love of science?
Yes, Arthur thought. Yes he was.
They spoke to each other after the lecture and introduced themselves with terse handshakes, smiling like gentlemen from turn-of-the-century novels, their hairs combed into artful pompadours. Later on they had a few drinks and Cobb's breath in Arthur's ear was close and hot, a comfort over the heavy drum beats of the house music in a bar not too far from the college. Arthur imagined two scenarios, one of it abominably perverse and involving his shoes kicked off at the foot of Cobb's bed, but Cobb turned and smiled, pulling his body away like a taut bowstring. Said, I'd like to introduce you to my fiancée, and smiled even wider.
three:
before the tailored suits and first class hotels, before Cobol and Arthur learning how to dismantle a gun. Before he stopped dreaming, he was his mother's son, climbing his way up the woodwork doing odd jobs here and there. He was a busboy one summer in high school and did something he wasn't very proud of involving a toy gun and a liquor store. Things got better, eventually, but it didn't mean they became easy. There was Cobb and the network of complications he presented, his lovely wife, pregnant with their first child. And then there was Eames who drove fast cars and spent his evenings in casinos and taught Arthur how to swear in half a dozen languages. Who took a bullet for him in Marseille and said, next time, don't forget to duck and laughed afterward in the street, his shoulder wrapped in bandages, his hands warm, curled in Arthur's back pockets when he pulled him in from the curb. Take care of yourself, he whispered and kissed Arthur, five years ago in a street in St. Tropez.
four:
he learned how to shoot six months after graduation. First in dreamspace where the loss of gravity meant limited mobility. Then later on behind a clapoard shack in Iowa (his first real job) where Cobb assembled tin cans like toy soldiers waiting on death row. His hands shook the first few times he fired, the recoil made him startle, jump in his skin, but there was a secret thrill that hummed under the wires when Cobb stepped behind him and patted him on the shoulder. Good job, and then Cobb smiled, taking aim. Arthur watched his stance carefully and studied the tension in his shoulders, the clean lines in his round face.
Come on, said Cobb, touching him on the elbow. I know you can do better.
five:
there is no dress code but because business is business there is no room for college sweaters, or jeans tiedyed and torn at the knees. Two years pass and life goes on, and things change and they are changing, Arthur changes and he continues to change even now as Cobb's right hand man. He sleeps with a gun under his pillow, the only comfort he knows deep into the night.
six:
after Mal dies, Arthur flies solo for awhile. Cobb finds solace behind the locked door of his bathroom while Arthur flies to Calcutta to clear his head. A change of scenery is good, he thinks, and pens a letter he keeps forgetting to send. He leaves it in a drawer somewhere, unmarked and half-finished, frayed in the corners with burn marks from cigarettes half-smoked at 3 in the morning. Later in a hotel room in Paris, he will remember this, this letter, and how he dotted his Is with infinite care, how the watery ink sank clean through paper, the calligraphy of his handwriting incomprehensible even to his own eyes. To Eames, he writes, but the sentiment is lost and forgotten, dismissed out of hand. Eames is halfway across the world now and Arthur would probably never see him again.
seven:
the feeling of that first kill, blood blooming in the sink where he tried peeling out his skin, tried scrubbing himself clean again, with soap, water, washing the metallic taste from his mouth, one hand coiled between his legs, rubbing the tight, heated skin, his other hand braced against the wall as water, blood and semen swirled down the drain.
The first kill is always hard to forget.
Sometimes he wonders if his mother will be proud of how he makes his living. Then he remembers that she is dead, has been dead five years; he missed the funeral because he had to fly to Moscow.
eight:
Eames reminds him of his time in Columbia and how he threw his arms around his knees and tucked his mouth into the crook of his elbow, laughing so hard he started to cry and choke on the alcohol still percolating in his stomach. The toxins that nested there like vipers from another night, of poor judgment and Cobb, Cobb's face, and his hand outstretched like a promise. A new life, a new name, better things, he said. All of it for Arthur, if he so desired.
Come with me, said Cobb and Arthur did and followed him into bed, in the backseat of stolen cars and everywhere around the world. He dreamt of things beyond his grasp, grandeur and extravagance, champagne in crystal flutes and blue summer holidays that stretched over his skin like tea steam. Maybe he shouldn't have trusted Cobb when he had one foot out the door. Maybe he should've gone home to his mother and worked a nine-to-five job. But maybe none of this was ever real. Maybe he was still dreaming.
nine:
it happened before Eames left for Mombasa, before Calcutta, but after St. Tropez. In the hallway, the doors shut like peaceful sleeping faces. Arthur turned and Eames was right there, watching him with inscrutable eyes.
What do you want, Arthur said, gritting his teeth and feigning bravado. But he didn't have enough energy to go on pretending, his arms were tired with thousand year old strain.
Nothing, Eames said. He touched Arthur on the elbow.
Nothing.
ten:
but he went and kissed Arthur anyway, his hands undoing every shank and bolt, that night before he flew to Mombasa, turned Arthur's blood hot under his skin. They fell against each other like a landslide, like a deck of cards, toppling - miming anger, conceding nothing, bodies lost to loneliness and old aches, until they were both coming, coming, coming. Flowing into each other like rivers into seas and seas into oceans, legs drowned and tangling like branches. And the taste of last night's carnage, the blood caked under their fingernails, lingering in the air like a thick intermittent storm.
In the morning, they dressed separately, and Eames pulled Arthur back from the curb of the street for one last kiss goodbye. Goodbye.