(05) → the brightest firefly in my jar (3/3)
title: the brightest firefly in my jar
pairing: arthur/eames
summary: the lookout au: before he was arthur, he was chris pratt. he is in paris with a beautiful french woman who knows his name and loves him and all he thinks of is the way eames looked at him.
For the first night, they sleep on a mattress on the floor. There’s enough room for the both of them to fit comfortably, especially when Eames holds him the way he does every night they’re together, but the fact that they’re on a floor makes everything much more uncomfortable.
On the first real day of being at home, Arthur wakes up with a backache and a migraine, and suspects Eames will wake up with the same. All the more reason to just stay in bed, Arthur thinks, because he doesn’t feel well today and he isn’t sure why.
Things are messy here at home. He knows that one day soon everything will be in an order Arthur can understand and follow, but right now, he doesn’t know where anything is and it terrifies him.
“Eames,” Arthur says, a bit too quietly when directed towards someone who could sleep through nearby construction. “Eames,” he says again, standing there in the doorway with just his boxers on and looking like he might cry any minute.
He doesn’t bother saying his name again. Instead, he panics, full-blown and awful, because he can’t find his clothes, and if his dresser isn’t labeled, how will he know what to wear? How can he make coffee? Did they even have a coffee pot? Where was his razor? Shaving cream? How could he take a shower? Where the fuck did the bathroom go?
He tears open a box, dumping it out and rummaging through it frantically. He finds nothing of his. He does the same with a second box, a third, never once remembering that he’d labeled the sides, because this is Chris Pratt now, not Arthur.
His chest heaves and he’s crying now, no clue how to function without order, command. He needs his meds. His meds, fuck, he didn’t take them last night. Or this morning, and how can he be okay if he doesn’t have his meds - if he can’t even find them?
His heart is pounding and he reaches for another box, fingers pulling at the tape hysterically before he feels Eames’s arms around him. He’s warm with sleep, no doubt having just woken up, and he leans in, hand rubbing methodically over Arthur’s back, fingers dancing across the jut of his spine. They don’t move. For a long time, they don’t move at all. And then, Eames says, “Next time you go Tasmanian Devil on me, give me a warning, hm?” And Arthur doesn’t understand it, but he nods anyway, head in the crook of Eames’s neck and his heart in the clouds. “I can’t find my meds,” he tells him, his voice wavering with something that sounds too much like fear for Eames to be comfortable with.
“There are glasses on the kitchen counter. Get yourself some water, okay? I’ll find your meds,” Eames says, only pulling away when Arthur does. He watches him walk to the kitchen, can’t help staring at the curve of his spine, the narrow width of his waist, how tiny he could be, if he wanted to. And Eames could destroy him, could break him, because even if Arthur is too proud, he is still breakable, and Eames is terrified of what that means. The vulnerability could fit in the palm of his hand but the weight of it won’t ever sit right with him.
He unpacks the boxes with Arthur’s name on them, and feels a twinge of worry because, if Arthur panics like this again and can’t function at all, what does that mean for Eames? Could he leave him alone in the house without this happening again? He doesn’t know. He won’t know until it happens. And he knows it will, because Eames can’t stay anywhere for long.
He finds the meds easily, and he grabs the small container and the bottles of pills and brings them to the kitchen, sticking labels on the microwave and oven along the way.
“See?” Eames holds the medication up and hands it to him. “All better.”
But Arthur doesn’t quite think so, that same, familiar panic keeping him cautious, fearful, a bundle of nerves and Eames leans in and kisses him. “You’re all right, darling. I’m here, you’re okay. We’re in a beautiful home together, just you and I. We’re happy, yeah?” And Arthur nods, because he is happy, he’s just terrified at the same time.
*
Mal visits when Eames tells her the house is finished. The walls are in shades of creams and beiges, but the furniture is colorful and organized and it looks so nice, Arthur thinks, beautiful, their home.
Philippa waddles around the house observantly and makes herself comfortable under the dining room table. Arthur climbs under it and hunches over, sitting next to her.
“Do you think the house is pretty?” Arthur asks her.
Philippa chirps out a “yeah!” and Arthur smiles. She is nothing like her mother, but just as wonderful to be around.
*
Mal, Dom, and Philippa stay for dinner. Arthur helps Eames cook pasta, following instructions and labels, and he’s very proud of himself when it comes out edible.
“This is wonderful,” Mal remarks. Philippa has sauce on her face but she’s eating quite contently, and Dom is twirling his own pasta around his fork appreciatively.
“Thank you,” Eames says, swooping down to kiss her cheek. “Arthur did a fantastic job, didn’t he?”
Arthur blushes, cheeks flushed, and grins.
Mal smiles back at him, a secret smile just for him.
*
When Eames and Dom clean up in the kitchen, Mal follows Arthur to the bedroom. They have a proper bed now, big and comfortable and Mal climbs up and lays down, and Arthur lays next to her because this is what they do.
“I want to tell you something, Arthur,” she says quietly, wrapping herself around him. “I am having another baby.”
Arthur doesn’t know what this means.
“Are you going to be sick again?” He asks softly and Mal starts to cry.
He’s never seen her cry.
“I hope so,” she says, and Arthur cries, too.
*
Arthur tells Eames the second they leave.
“Mal is having another baby,” he says. “She’s going to get sick again, I know it. I don’t know what to do when she’s sick, she’s gonna - “
“Stop,” Eames says, cupping his face and leaning in. Eames smells like the pasta they just cooked, and Arthur must smell like Mal’s perfume, like daisies, like a five year-old girl with bubblegum lips, and he stops himself from talking. “You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. Mal will be fine,” Eames says.
They don’t talk about it again.
*
Mal says, “How do I know if I’m dreaming? I won’t know unless I die, right?”
And Arthur says “yes.”
“My mother gave me a top when I was girl. It was an accidental gift. She meant it for my brother, for those sets with the jacks and ball, but somehow the top found its way in the set, which found its way to me. I hated it, but it was only ever mine.” She stares at him for a long time, lovingly and adoringly and she kisses his cheek. “What do you think will happen if I spin it? If I spin it in a dream, Arthur?”
Mal goes under for weeks. Arthur doesn’t ask her what happens to the top.
*
When Mal wakes up, she looks tired. She hasn’t slept, but she looks tired. Arthur lays down with her and she holds his hands and says, “you have learned so much, Arthur. You have achieved so much. You came into this stupid little project because you wanted to take a risk. You wanted something different.” She’s losing it, Arthur can tell. Her lines are blurring, bubblegum lips, and she could be a crazy woman right now and Arthur wouldn’t know, wouldn’t care. “When I spin the top in my dream, it spins forever. You should have something like that, like my top,” she nods. “I got you something.”
Arthur watches her reach into the bedside table drawer and pull out a small pouch. She drops it in Arthur’s lap and watches him curiously. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly,” she recites. “Isn’t that wonderful, Arthur? The life you’ve made for yourself by taking risks.” She watches him pull the die out, red, cherry lips, and he wiggles it in his palm. “Now, when you roll this die, you will know for sure if this risk is one you can have faith in.”
Arthur glances down at it, thumbs over the indentations. “You can never have faith in a risk,” he says, and Mal laughs.
“I knew you would love it.”
He does.
*
Arthur steals a PASIV.
Every night, right before bed, he dreams that he and Eames are driving and there are fireflies above their heads, and Mal and Dom are in the back seat and they’re all happy.
The car never crashes. They keep driving, down a road that never moves or changes, their hands in the air, fireflies against their palms, constellations in two skies, love in four hearts, and they drive.
These are the best dreams he has.
*
Arthur gets sick.
He follows suit, with Mal, and loses himself in dreams. He goes to her house, sleeps in her bed, dreams her dreams, and he knows now why she does it.
For a while, things blur for Arthur, too, but Eames pulls him out, back, wraps his arms around him and breathes against his neck and says darling, stay with me and he says goodbye to Mal, once and for all.
There is a different Mal he knows now, cherry lips, never bubblegum anymore, and she is a woman. A beautiful French woman and they are in Paris, in a dream, and there are tall buildings and high heels and a dress that sweeps over Mal’s knees. They work one job before James is born and this is it, this is everything. This is the Mal Dom will know only in fairytales. For Mal’s shoulders peek out from her black dress and she tilts her head and looks down and says I love this world the most and then please stay here with me and Arthur says yes and Dom says no and they wake up.
It is the first job Arthur fails at, the last he’ll remember vividly, and the only that means anything at all to him.
*
When James is born, Mal goes quiet.
When Arthur visits, he lays with Mal, but that’s it. They don’t talk anymore, not really, and Mal doesn’t hold him as much as she used to. She just sleeps, or pretends to, but the point is that Arthur never sees her eyes anymore, bubblegum lips, and he cries. And when he does, Mal does nothing.
He goes home to Eames, who holds him as close as he can, and there is still something missing that Arthur can’t name.
*
“I need to go away for a while,” Eames says. They are sitting at the kitchen table. Arthur made breakfast, all by himself, and coffee, too, but Eames doesn’t say anything about it. He just says this: I need to go away for a while, and Arthur repeats it in his mind before knowing what to say.
“Okay.”
Gears and pulleys and levers and Arthur never needs to know anything more than that he’s leaving. Eames can go wherever, whenever, and Arthur will wait because it’s easier to wait than follow and get lost.
He learns this from Mal.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Will you be okay here, by yourself?” He asks, and he is very serious, and Arthur realizes he has never lived alone. But he needs to be responsible, because he promised this to Eames before they moved in together. He has his labels and his notes and money, and Mal is just a few blocks away, so yes, I’ll be okay and Eames kisses him, hard and quick and leaves, just like that.
It takes four months for Arthur to remember Eames left at all. It takes another three to realize how much he misses him. But it only takes those first seven months that pass by too quickly, too slowly, that pass by at all for him to realize he has not seen Mal, either. And on that same day, when Arthur stays up for hours thinking of her, bubblegum lips, Dom calls him and bawls his eyes out, because Mal is dead, and Arthur thinks of fireflies and runs runs runs until he is lost, because it is easier to follow and get lost than wait for something that won’t come back.
*
When Eames comes back, it is for the funeral.
There is barely anything left of Mal to bury.
Arthur makes a note of this in his book and scribbles over the page in the colors of fire. His mouth burns, but he does not make a note of that.
Eames holds his hand, tight, there like an anchor because Arthur is very positive that he will sink if Eames lets go. Mal is gone, he tells himself. Mal is gone and she is never coming back.
She is never coming back.
Dom doesn’t say anything to him. He holds Philippa’s hand and James’s, too, and they pay their respects and they leave. And Arthur lays down in the grass, right next to where Mal would be if they were in bed, and he tells her about the fireflies, realizes that he never took her there, to that memory, to that secret place, and hates himself for it.
Eames lays down on the other side, and he reaches across the muddy outline of Mal’s grave and holds Arthur’s hand, and they stay that way for hours and Arthur sleeps.
*
It takes months for Dom to call him. He pulls Arthur on a series of jobs, and this is where Arthur knows to be professional, to act business-like and block everything else out, because it is important. They dream of impossible things, beautiful things, bubblegum things, because Mal is there every time and Arthur is only loyal to Dom because he was loyal to Mal, first.
*
Arthur comes home to Eames. He is sitting on the couch, arm across the back as if he was waiting for him. Arthur is exhausted to the point where he can barely move. His head is throbbing and he doesn’t want to be in this stupid suit anymore. His chest aches with grief, always there, always, always and he feels like he might cry.
Eames takes off his jacket for him, unties his tie, unbuttons his button-down, smooths his hands over Arthur’s undershirt and kisses him. “Come to bed,” he murmurs, and Arthur does.
He doesn’t sleep right away; he can’t. His mind won’t stop moving, running, spinning and jumping and he can’t stay still. He thinks of Mal, wonders if she was right about all of this, if she got to wake up when she jumped.
He gets out of bed in the middle of the night and finds his die, sits in the middle of the floor and rolls it. Again and again and again.
He thinks of Mal, how she trusted the risks he took simply because he was Arthur, her Arthur. He has faith in this, this silly notion that the weight of this die is his alone. It used to be his and Mal’s, and even if he never understood her or her ideas, this die is the one thing they shared that he can keep forever.
Unless you catch them in a jar, you can never keep fireflies, but this part of Mal, this risk-taking, reckless, bubblegum lips part of Mal, is all he has left.
*
The labels in his bedside drawer are the best notes he keeps.
He reads over them three days before Eames will tell him he’s leaving. He will read Lewis and then friend; he will read Mal and then lovely; he will read Dom and then build. He will read Eames and Eames again. And once more, with fireflies taped to the back.
*
Eames leaves for Mombasa in the morning. All Arthur knows is where he’s going. It’s enough for him, if only because he knows Eames will come back eventually.
That morning, he wakes up.
He takes a shower, with soap.
He thinks of Eames and fireflies and Mal and what he used to be and what he is now. The label on the mirror tells him to shave, so he does. His dresser tells him to wear jeans and a sweater because it’s Tuesday, so he does.
But his labels and his notes don’t tell him what to do about the way he feels for Eames and how badly he misses him and -
- he wakes up.
*
While Eames is gone, he will go on jobs with Dom. He will take notes and document their triumphs and their defeats. He will put money away for emergencies because Mal told him to be frivolous but safe. He will wait for Eames to come back and dream of fireflies when he is gone. He will mourn for Mal and for Chris Pratt and he will have the power because he is rich in something more important than money.
He will wake up.
He will take a shower, with soap.
He will meet a young woman named Ariadne, rose petal lips. Dom will bring Eames back for him (who kisses him and calls him darling and means it) and they will be together. He will see Mal in these dreams. He will tell Ariadne that she was lovely before she jumped. He will try to kiss the architect, but it will mean more to her than him, because when he leaves the airport, he will be going home with Eames to firefly dreams.
Eames will pour him some wine (which he shouldn’t have, but sometimes Eames lets him) and he will raise his glass and say to merry chases and a job well done and Arthur will say to fireflies.
And they will drink.
fin.
pairing: arthur/eames
summary: the lookout au: before he was arthur, he was chris pratt. he is in paris with a beautiful french woman who knows his name and loves him and all he thinks of is the way eames looked at him.
For the first night, they sleep on a mattress on the floor. There’s enough room for the both of them to fit comfortably, especially when Eames holds him the way he does every night they’re together, but the fact that they’re on a floor makes everything much more uncomfortable.
On the first real day of being at home, Arthur wakes up with a backache and a migraine, and suspects Eames will wake up with the same. All the more reason to just stay in bed, Arthur thinks, because he doesn’t feel well today and he isn’t sure why.
Things are messy here at home. He knows that one day soon everything will be in an order Arthur can understand and follow, but right now, he doesn’t know where anything is and it terrifies him.
“Eames,” Arthur says, a bit too quietly when directed towards someone who could sleep through nearby construction. “Eames,” he says again, standing there in the doorway with just his boxers on and looking like he might cry any minute.
He doesn’t bother saying his name again. Instead, he panics, full-blown and awful, because he can’t find his clothes, and if his dresser isn’t labeled, how will he know what to wear? How can he make coffee? Did they even have a coffee pot? Where was his razor? Shaving cream? How could he take a shower? Where the fuck did the bathroom go?
He tears open a box, dumping it out and rummaging through it frantically. He finds nothing of his. He does the same with a second box, a third, never once remembering that he’d labeled the sides, because this is Chris Pratt now, not Arthur.
His chest heaves and he’s crying now, no clue how to function without order, command. He needs his meds. His meds, fuck, he didn’t take them last night. Or this morning, and how can he be okay if he doesn’t have his meds - if he can’t even find them?
His heart is pounding and he reaches for another box, fingers pulling at the tape hysterically before he feels Eames’s arms around him. He’s warm with sleep, no doubt having just woken up, and he leans in, hand rubbing methodically over Arthur’s back, fingers dancing across the jut of his spine. They don’t move. For a long time, they don’t move at all. And then, Eames says, “Next time you go Tasmanian Devil on me, give me a warning, hm?” And Arthur doesn’t understand it, but he nods anyway, head in the crook of Eames’s neck and his heart in the clouds. “I can’t find my meds,” he tells him, his voice wavering with something that sounds too much like fear for Eames to be comfortable with.
“There are glasses on the kitchen counter. Get yourself some water, okay? I’ll find your meds,” Eames says, only pulling away when Arthur does. He watches him walk to the kitchen, can’t help staring at the curve of his spine, the narrow width of his waist, how tiny he could be, if he wanted to. And Eames could destroy him, could break him, because even if Arthur is too proud, he is still breakable, and Eames is terrified of what that means. The vulnerability could fit in the palm of his hand but the weight of it won’t ever sit right with him.
He unpacks the boxes with Arthur’s name on them, and feels a twinge of worry because, if Arthur panics like this again and can’t function at all, what does that mean for Eames? Could he leave him alone in the house without this happening again? He doesn’t know. He won’t know until it happens. And he knows it will, because Eames can’t stay anywhere for long.
He finds the meds easily, and he grabs the small container and the bottles of pills and brings them to the kitchen, sticking labels on the microwave and oven along the way.
“See?” Eames holds the medication up and hands it to him. “All better.”
But Arthur doesn’t quite think so, that same, familiar panic keeping him cautious, fearful, a bundle of nerves and Eames leans in and kisses him. “You’re all right, darling. I’m here, you’re okay. We’re in a beautiful home together, just you and I. We’re happy, yeah?” And Arthur nods, because he is happy, he’s just terrified at the same time.
*
Mal visits when Eames tells her the house is finished. The walls are in shades of creams and beiges, but the furniture is colorful and organized and it looks so nice, Arthur thinks, beautiful, their home.
Philippa waddles around the house observantly and makes herself comfortable under the dining room table. Arthur climbs under it and hunches over, sitting next to her.
“Do you think the house is pretty?” Arthur asks her.
Philippa chirps out a “yeah!” and Arthur smiles. She is nothing like her mother, but just as wonderful to be around.
*
Mal, Dom, and Philippa stay for dinner. Arthur helps Eames cook pasta, following instructions and labels, and he’s very proud of himself when it comes out edible.
“This is wonderful,” Mal remarks. Philippa has sauce on her face but she’s eating quite contently, and Dom is twirling his own pasta around his fork appreciatively.
“Thank you,” Eames says, swooping down to kiss her cheek. “Arthur did a fantastic job, didn’t he?”
Arthur blushes, cheeks flushed, and grins.
Mal smiles back at him, a secret smile just for him.
*
When Eames and Dom clean up in the kitchen, Mal follows Arthur to the bedroom. They have a proper bed now, big and comfortable and Mal climbs up and lays down, and Arthur lays next to her because this is what they do.
“I want to tell you something, Arthur,” she says quietly, wrapping herself around him. “I am having another baby.”
Arthur doesn’t know what this means.
“Are you going to be sick again?” He asks softly and Mal starts to cry.
He’s never seen her cry.
“I hope so,” she says, and Arthur cries, too.
*
Arthur tells Eames the second they leave.
“Mal is having another baby,” he says. “She’s going to get sick again, I know it. I don’t know what to do when she’s sick, she’s gonna - “
“Stop,” Eames says, cupping his face and leaning in. Eames smells like the pasta they just cooked, and Arthur must smell like Mal’s perfume, like daisies, like a five year-old girl with bubblegum lips, and he stops himself from talking. “You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. Mal will be fine,” Eames says.
They don’t talk about it again.
*
Mal says, “How do I know if I’m dreaming? I won’t know unless I die, right?”
And Arthur says “yes.”
“My mother gave me a top when I was girl. It was an accidental gift. She meant it for my brother, for those sets with the jacks and ball, but somehow the top found its way in the set, which found its way to me. I hated it, but it was only ever mine.” She stares at him for a long time, lovingly and adoringly and she kisses his cheek. “What do you think will happen if I spin it? If I spin it in a dream, Arthur?”
Mal goes under for weeks. Arthur doesn’t ask her what happens to the top.
*
When Mal wakes up, she looks tired. She hasn’t slept, but she looks tired. Arthur lays down with her and she holds his hands and says, “you have learned so much, Arthur. You have achieved so much. You came into this stupid little project because you wanted to take a risk. You wanted something different.” She’s losing it, Arthur can tell. Her lines are blurring, bubblegum lips, and she could be a crazy woman right now and Arthur wouldn’t know, wouldn’t care. “When I spin the top in my dream, it spins forever. You should have something like that, like my top,” she nods. “I got you something.”
Arthur watches her reach into the bedside table drawer and pull out a small pouch. She drops it in Arthur’s lap and watches him curiously. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly,” she recites. “Isn’t that wonderful, Arthur? The life you’ve made for yourself by taking risks.” She watches him pull the die out, red, cherry lips, and he wiggles it in his palm. “Now, when you roll this die, you will know for sure if this risk is one you can have faith in.”
Arthur glances down at it, thumbs over the indentations. “You can never have faith in a risk,” he says, and Mal laughs.
“I knew you would love it.”
He does.
*
Arthur steals a PASIV.
Every night, right before bed, he dreams that he and Eames are driving and there are fireflies above their heads, and Mal and Dom are in the back seat and they’re all happy.
The car never crashes. They keep driving, down a road that never moves or changes, their hands in the air, fireflies against their palms, constellations in two skies, love in four hearts, and they drive.
These are the best dreams he has.
*
Arthur gets sick.
He follows suit, with Mal, and loses himself in dreams. He goes to her house, sleeps in her bed, dreams her dreams, and he knows now why she does it.
For a while, things blur for Arthur, too, but Eames pulls him out, back, wraps his arms around him and breathes against his neck and says darling, stay with me and he says goodbye to Mal, once and for all.
There is a different Mal he knows now, cherry lips, never bubblegum anymore, and she is a woman. A beautiful French woman and they are in Paris, in a dream, and there are tall buildings and high heels and a dress that sweeps over Mal’s knees. They work one job before James is born and this is it, this is everything. This is the Mal Dom will know only in fairytales. For Mal’s shoulders peek out from her black dress and she tilts her head and looks down and says I love this world the most and then please stay here with me and Arthur says yes and Dom says no and they wake up.
It is the first job Arthur fails at, the last he’ll remember vividly, and the only that means anything at all to him.
*
When James is born, Mal goes quiet.
When Arthur visits, he lays with Mal, but that’s it. They don’t talk anymore, not really, and Mal doesn’t hold him as much as she used to. She just sleeps, or pretends to, but the point is that Arthur never sees her eyes anymore, bubblegum lips, and he cries. And when he does, Mal does nothing.
He goes home to Eames, who holds him as close as he can, and there is still something missing that Arthur can’t name.
*
“I need to go away for a while,” Eames says. They are sitting at the kitchen table. Arthur made breakfast, all by himself, and coffee, too, but Eames doesn’t say anything about it. He just says this: I need to go away for a while, and Arthur repeats it in his mind before knowing what to say.
“Okay.”
Gears and pulleys and levers and Arthur never needs to know anything more than that he’s leaving. Eames can go wherever, whenever, and Arthur will wait because it’s easier to wait than follow and get lost.
He learns this from Mal.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Will you be okay here, by yourself?” He asks, and he is very serious, and Arthur realizes he has never lived alone. But he needs to be responsible, because he promised this to Eames before they moved in together. He has his labels and his notes and money, and Mal is just a few blocks away, so yes, I’ll be okay and Eames kisses him, hard and quick and leaves, just like that.
It takes four months for Arthur to remember Eames left at all. It takes another three to realize how much he misses him. But it only takes those first seven months that pass by too quickly, too slowly, that pass by at all for him to realize he has not seen Mal, either. And on that same day, when Arthur stays up for hours thinking of her, bubblegum lips, Dom calls him and bawls his eyes out, because Mal is dead, and Arthur thinks of fireflies and runs runs runs until he is lost, because it is easier to follow and get lost than wait for something that won’t come back.
*
When Eames comes back, it is for the funeral.
There is barely anything left of Mal to bury.
Arthur makes a note of this in his book and scribbles over the page in the colors of fire. His mouth burns, but he does not make a note of that.
Eames holds his hand, tight, there like an anchor because Arthur is very positive that he will sink if Eames lets go. Mal is gone, he tells himself. Mal is gone and she is never coming back.
She is never coming back.
Dom doesn’t say anything to him. He holds Philippa’s hand and James’s, too, and they pay their respects and they leave. And Arthur lays down in the grass, right next to where Mal would be if they were in bed, and he tells her about the fireflies, realizes that he never took her there, to that memory, to that secret place, and hates himself for it.
Eames lays down on the other side, and he reaches across the muddy outline of Mal’s grave and holds Arthur’s hand, and they stay that way for hours and Arthur sleeps.
*
It takes months for Dom to call him. He pulls Arthur on a series of jobs, and this is where Arthur knows to be professional, to act business-like and block everything else out, because it is important. They dream of impossible things, beautiful things, bubblegum things, because Mal is there every time and Arthur is only loyal to Dom because he was loyal to Mal, first.
*
Arthur comes home to Eames. He is sitting on the couch, arm across the back as if he was waiting for him. Arthur is exhausted to the point where he can barely move. His head is throbbing and he doesn’t want to be in this stupid suit anymore. His chest aches with grief, always there, always, always and he feels like he might cry.
Eames takes off his jacket for him, unties his tie, unbuttons his button-down, smooths his hands over Arthur’s undershirt and kisses him. “Come to bed,” he murmurs, and Arthur does.
He doesn’t sleep right away; he can’t. His mind won’t stop moving, running, spinning and jumping and he can’t stay still. He thinks of Mal, wonders if she was right about all of this, if she got to wake up when she jumped.
He gets out of bed in the middle of the night and finds his die, sits in the middle of the floor and rolls it. Again and again and again.
He thinks of Mal, how she trusted the risks he took simply because he was Arthur, her Arthur. He has faith in this, this silly notion that the weight of this die is his alone. It used to be his and Mal’s, and even if he never understood her or her ideas, this die is the one thing they shared that he can keep forever.
Unless you catch them in a jar, you can never keep fireflies, but this part of Mal, this risk-taking, reckless, bubblegum lips part of Mal, is all he has left.
*
The labels in his bedside drawer are the best notes he keeps.
He reads over them three days before Eames will tell him he’s leaving. He will read Lewis and then friend; he will read Mal and then lovely; he will read Dom and then build. He will read Eames and Eames again. And once more, with fireflies taped to the back.
*
Eames leaves for Mombasa in the morning. All Arthur knows is where he’s going. It’s enough for him, if only because he knows Eames will come back eventually.
That morning, he wakes up.
He takes a shower, with soap.
He thinks of Eames and fireflies and Mal and what he used to be and what he is now. The label on the mirror tells him to shave, so he does. His dresser tells him to wear jeans and a sweater because it’s Tuesday, so he does.
But his labels and his notes don’t tell him what to do about the way he feels for Eames and how badly he misses him and -
- he wakes up.
*
While Eames is gone, he will go on jobs with Dom. He will take notes and document their triumphs and their defeats. He will put money away for emergencies because Mal told him to be frivolous but safe. He will wait for Eames to come back and dream of fireflies when he is gone. He will mourn for Mal and for Chris Pratt and he will have the power because he is rich in something more important than money.
He will wake up.
He will take a shower, with soap.
He will meet a young woman named Ariadne, rose petal lips. Dom will bring Eames back for him (who kisses him and calls him darling and means it) and they will be together. He will see Mal in these dreams. He will tell Ariadne that she was lovely before she jumped. He will try to kiss the architect, but it will mean more to her than him, because when he leaves the airport, he will be going home with Eames to firefly dreams.
Eames will pour him some wine (which he shouldn’t have, but sometimes Eames lets him) and he will raise his glass and say to merry chases and a job well done and Arthur will say to fireflies.
And they will drink.
fin.