fic: nobody knew me back home anymore [2/3]
(PART I)
(PART III)
Part II
Arthur is lingering around the front doors to the auditorium, fanning himself from the May heat with one of the last few programmes he’s meant to be handing out for the production of Guys and Dolls, when Eames appears out the doorway down the hall. His trilby is tipped at a jaunty angle as a finishing touch to his costume, but there are still three paper napkins shoved into the collar of his shirt to protect it from liberal application of foundation.
“Let me get those for you,” Arthur whispers, letting the auditorium door snick shut fully as he moves across the wood floors on silent feet to tug the tissues from Eames shirt. “What are you doing out here anyway; curtain goes up in about two minutes.”
“It’s the last night; I came for luck. And also, to make sure you’re going to the cast party.”
“I thought they were only inviting juniors and seniors in stage crew along. Laura said they were trying to limit the numbers so people can bring dates. Jamie is throwing what he’s calling a ‘leftovers’ party for the rest of us.”
Eames grins deviously. “You don’t even like Jamie. You’ll have to be my date.”
Arthur rolls his eyes, “I really shouldn’t go.”
“Come on…”
Arthur studies Eames closely for a minute. Eames really does seem to want Arthur to go with him, so he finally nods his head in acquiescence.
“You’ll come along, then?” The stage band is starting up in the other room, and Eames really, absolutely shouldn’t be out here still.
“Yes, yes, fine,” Arthur promises.
“And what about my good luck?” Eames asks. He’s looming in very close, close enough that Arthur can see that he’s wearing a little eyeliner just to make his eyes stand out, and that his mouth is too red from a flush of nervous energy. For one wild moment, Arthur thinks I could just lean right over and kiss him. A kiss for luck is fair enough. He swallows and quickly puts just enough room for air between them.
“Break a leg,” he whispers, voice cracking. Eames face is shuttered, but Arthur can’t tell if he’s just trying to get himself into character for the play, or if he’s hiding some other emotion.
“Eames,” a voice calls from down the hallway, in that harsh whisper of someone who is pretending to be concerned the audience might hear them. “Get your ass back in here - you have fifteen seconds.”
Eames tips his trilby and dashes back down the hall. Arthur watches him go, feeling a little light-headed.
“Fuck,” he whispers under his breath. A few late arrivals come bustling into the empty lobby. They whisper their apologies and Arthur quietly opens the door, allowing them to file one by one to their seats. The curtains are still closed, but the lights are dim, and he sees Mrs Linde give the signal to the conductor to start the overture.
Arthur sets the rest of the programmes down on his ticket desk and circles around to the back of the theatre where the rest of the stage crew are sorting through props and making sure all the correct ones are in boxes labelled for each scene. They’ve checked and double-checked, and at this point it’s just something for them all to do while they wait for the first changeover.
The first people are crossing onto the stage now, and from Arthur’s position - he’s practically onstage; they always put him here because he’s the quietest - he can read the print on the newspapers in the stand on set.
He’s sort of excited. Eames is approximately two leagues ahead of almost everyone else in the production. When Eames plays a part he isn’t playing it, he’s being it, like he was never anyone else. There is something about watching people who are good at what they do that makes Arthur breathless.
After the production is over, Eames comes and finds Arthur while he’s sorting the Hot Box girls’ costumes from their first performance.
“Right,” Eames says. “I have finished placating my many adoring fans. Elise says the party has pretty much already started. Are you finished here?”
“Yeah, just let me get my bag,” Arthur responds. He stops a moment on his way to the other room, just next to Eames as he passes by him in the doorway.
“By the way, you were fucking amazing.”
Eames looks surprised, and happy. “Yeah?” he asks.
“I thought you were a genius last year, but I think you’ve gotten even better, were it possible.”
“Careful, Arthur, I’ll grow an ego if you continue on like this.” Eames looks down when he smiles. He might be blushing very slightly.
“It’s too late for that,” Arthur says shaking his head in mock-sadness, knowing he ought to stop complimenting Eames now, lest he say something embarrassing.
The drive across town to Elise’s is only five minutes. Arthur’s been many times before because Eames is pretty good friends with Elise and he often tags along with Eames in what he hopes is not an annoying, younger kid way.
On the drive over, Arthur tells Eames about the near disaster they had trying to move the newsstand off stage and how they almost crushed the portly kid playing Nicely Nicely with it and Eames is in fits of hysterics, driving recklessly down the road. By the time they get there, he’s wheezing and his foundation is looking smeary in some places and powdery in others, but it doesn’t really make him any less attractive.
Eames gets out of the car and Arthur pauses for a moment, leaning his head back against the seat and closes his eyes tiredly.
It’s another year and a half before Eames goes to college. Arthur’s caught between recognising that he’ll never manage to have so much as a crush on someone new when Eames is around being everything Arthur wants, and feeling physically sick at the thought of life without seeing Eames everyday.
Eames knocks on Arthur’s window. “Come on,” he says, sounding hollow through the glass. Arthur gets out of the door and Eames slings a broad, friendly arm across Arthur’s shoulders and puts his trilby on Arthur’s head.
“I look ridiculous now,” Arthur complains.
“That’s the point,” Eames declares. “Besides, I think it’s very dashing.” He accepts a red plastic cup from a girl at the door and then takes one for Arthur too and passes it over. Arthur frowns with distaste. “I don’t really...”
A shadow passes over Eames face. “Obviously,” he says. “It’s just to hold. You have to look like you’re drinking or people will push it on you. I won’t either.”
Arthur shakes his head. “I don’t mind. Just because I’ve got bad experiences doesn’t mean everyone does. I’m not judging you.”
Eames tilts his chin up like this means something important to him. They’re halfway through the house now, and Eames pauses and empties his cup into a potted tree and fills it with coke from an unopened litre bottle. “If anyone asks,” he says, “It’s half vodka.”
Arthur means it when he says it doesn’t bother him to be around people drinking, but he can’t help but be a little pleased at Eames’ thoughtfulness.
A few hours later, Arthur is talking to three girls he knows from his math class, which he takes with the grade above. There is some random boy passed out on the couch between them.
“You should be teaching that class,” Arthur says to the girl closest to him. She has to correct the teacher regularly and they all joke that she should stop being so polite about it and just kick him out of the room.
“Who would do the photocopying then?” her friend laughs. She was playing one of the Mission Band members and her hair is pulled back from her face with military severity for the role.
“That is kind of true,” says the third girl and Arthur nods along with them. Eames barrels in from the backyard, leaving the screen door wide open behind him. He makes a beeline for Arthur, stepping carelessly over a few people sprawling on the floor. After side stepping a couple dancing to the crappy music, Eames collapses onto the arm of the sofa Arthur is sharing with his math friends and the drunk guy.
“Are you talking about schoolwork,” Eames asks, as if it’s a personal insult for Arthur to do so. “Don’t be so dull. It’s as if you want people to think you’re dull when we both know you aren’t.” Eames leans in conspiratorially to the girl nearest him. He has to lean all the way over Arthur to cup his hand around her ear and he’s practically lying in Arthur’s lap, a gap of skin appearing as his shirt slides up with the arch of his back.
“I bet you didn’t know that Arthur can recite a few of Baudelaire’s prose poems in the original French, eh?” Eames murmurs with a sultry growl. Arthur swallows thickly.
“Normal people don’t find that interesting, Eames.” Arthur says flatly, more in order to avoid sounding breathless than to show annoyance. “What are you doing over here anyway?”
Instead of safely removing himself back to his section of the sofa, Eames leans the rest of his weight on Arthur, lying sprawled across him with his head in Arthur’s lap. He stretches like a cat. The back of Arthur’s neck feels hot. “Some of the girls are starting up a game of spin the bottle. I’ve come to offer you an invitation.”
“Spin the bottle?” Arthur says, already shaking his head. “How old do you think we are?”
“Oh, come on, Arthur. It’s just for fun,” he bites his lower lip a bit, making his thinking face. Arthur’s sure whatever reason Eames next comes up with to get him to join in is going to be horribly embarrassing so he gives Eames a look to convey his seriousness.
“I won’t do it,” he says. Eames sighs and drags himself to his feet, pretending to be forlorn.
“So boring,” Eames whines.
Arthur shrugs as if to say, you know that already. Eames sighs heavily as he wrenches himself to his feet. Arthur watches him amble aimlessly away, caught in a crowd of people lofting an empty glass beer bottle around.
Arthur rubs the back of his neck as if he might be able to brush away the fact that he’s turned on from having Eames close and on top of him. This whole last year, it seems like Eames has been more physical with him than when they were younger, but Arthur is pretty sure he only feels that way because every time Eames touches him he can feel the press of skin for hours afterwards.
“Arthur….” He turns abruptly, having nearly forgotten the three girls are sitting right there. The girl who’s spoken is avoiding Arthur’s eyes when he looks up at her. She looks like she thinks she might regret what she’s about to say and wants to say it anyway.
“What?” Arthur asks.
She lowers her voice to very quiet, nearly whispering. “I get that this town is not…you know, accommodating. But, I wanted you to know that I think you guys seem really good together.”
“What?” Arthur asks, again, blankly. “Eames and I. How do you mean?” He’s sure she can’t mean what she sounds like she means.
“You know,” she pauses and turns to her friend as if wanting confirmation on her theory. “You make a nice couple.”
Arthur tenses up completely, clenching his hands and looking around furtively. He’s stuck between the crawling sensation that his father is just around the corner, overhearing this conversation and a feeling that’s something like embarrassment or shame. It’s not because these three girls have found out some half-truth, but because it’s only a half-truth, and he’s going to have to explain that he doesn’t have Eames and they aren’t together at all, even though he wishes they were so much that it makes it difficult for him to breath sometimes.
“I think you guys have misunderstood something,” he says, leaning back into the sofa and pinching the bridge of his nose against a sudden headache. “We’re not going out,” he sighs.
The girls all look genuinely shocked. Arthur’s glad they weren’t just trying to get a rise out of him. It’d be pretty awful if they were playing some kind of trick.
“We’re really not,” he insists.
“But….” One of the girls starts talking, confused, as if some fact that she thought was indisputable had changed. “The way he is with you is like... My boyfriend isn’t even that sweet with me.”
Arthur laughs dryly. “Eames?” he asks, “Sweet? I think you’re confused.”
“What I mean is, you’re always hanging all over each other, and he drives you everywhere and takes you to parties and you carry each other’s backpacks and your arms brush when you walk and you get each other - you really know each other.”
Arthur shrugs. “Sorry to disappoint, but the touching thing is just Eames. I dunno…he’s English. Maybe that explains it. And the rest of it…we’ve lived next door to each other for almost six years now. If it seems like I know him so well, it’s because I do. He’s not into me like that. If he were, he wouldn’t be able to hide it.”
“But you like him?” the quietest of the three asks.
Arthur winces and then, before he can stop himself, nods. They sit in silence for a few minutes. Arthur refuses to look up.
“He’s not hiding it,” she says, finally.
“What do you mean?” Arthur mumbles.
“He likes you. I think he really likes you. But I think you can’t see it because he’s not hiding it at all and it’s so obvious it’s too big for you to see.”
Arthur smiles at the idea, thinking it’s half-beautiful, half-absurd. He shakes his head and presses his palms to his eyes to make sure there isn’t any chance he’ll start crying; Arthur hates getting emotional. “I’m sorry, I just think you’re wrong. You don’t know him like I do. You don’t know us.”
The quiet girl shrugs and gets to her feet, grabbing an empty plastic cup to go for another drink. “We’ll have to agree to disagree,” she says, and disappears into the crowd of people. Arthur turns to the other two girls, looking for confirmation that he’s the sane one and the other girl was just talking nonsense, but they just raise their eyebrows as if to say, if only you understood.
Arthur hates how sure some outsider can be about his life just because they aren’t in the soupy, disastrous the middle of it.
---
Arthur goes out into the back garden. Most of the people who were out here before have migrated into Eames’ now massive game of spin the bottle, which Arthur had to navigate through to get to the back door.
Eames gave him a little half-wave as Arthur was trekking through the crowds and Arthur feels bad because he blanked Eames. It’s not Eames fault if some girl tipped his thought process into an awful circle of if only, if only, if only. It’s not Eames fault he’s just so…so…Eames.
When Arthur meets someone, there is usually a point well into the friendship when he realises that he’ll never have to worry about crushing on them because he knows so much about them. He ultimately hates and loves too many pieces of them to add romance into the mix. Unfortunately, with Eames, Arthur reached that moment and then kept going, just passed it by until he was too far gone to even turn around.
He stares out at the garden. Everything smudges into darkness a few feet away from him like the fade-to-black at the end of a film. Arthur’s getting tired of being sixteen and not knowing a fucking thing about where he’s going or what he’s supposed to be doing. Shouldn’t there be some kind of map? He thinks, annoyed by his own gloomy thoughts.
“Hey,” someone says from behind him. Arthur recognises the voice and tread as Eames before he turns around. “Are you okay? You looked a bit weird when you walked past before.”
“I’m fine,” Arthur says, leaning back into the chair. He really is fine. He wouldn’t be a proper teenager if he didn’t indulge himself with a little time for angst every now and then.
“Right,” Eames says. He sits in the grass at Arthur’s feet.
“You should go back in. Your spin the bottle looked like it was a hit.”
“It was getting boring,” Eames says. His mouth is smeared with other people’s lipstick.
“Sometimes life is boring, you know. Things can’t be interesting every second of every day.”
“You are,” Eames says, like this is an obvious fact.
“Even when I’m sleeping or reading or watering the grass?” Arthur asks.
“You always interest me. Especially when you water the grass. It make me nostalgic for our first meeting.” Eames smiles demurely and flutters his eyelashes.
“I rue the day I told you that you were a good actor.”
Eames cracks a real grin and tugs Arthur’s sleeve to pull him down into the grass beside him. “It’s dewy,” Arthur says in protest, but he goes easily, anyway. Eames leaves his arm slung out so his shoulder pillows Arthur’s head. Eames has a whole collection of tattoos now; Arthur can see traces of the geometric patterns circling Eames’ upper arm and a few lines of script. He tries to imagine what it would feel like to trace them all slowly and carefully with his fingertip.
“Those girls I was talking to before thought we were dating,” he says, attempting to sound mildly amused. He wouldn’t have mentioned it, but it’s dark and the sounds of the house are muffled, putting him in that particular mood where keeping secrets from Eames seems profoundly wrong.
Eames is silent, and Arthur listens to his breathing, soft and even, until he starts to get nervous. “Eames?” he asks. “Don’t worry, I told them they we weren’t.”
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like?”
Now it’s Arthur’s turn to be silent for too long. What is the right thing to say to a question like that? He certainly isn’t going blurting out the truth.
He tries to laugh it off, “Wouldn’t be that different from now, I guess.” Arthur says wryly. “I already buy you dinner and hold doors open for you.”
“No, I mean really. We like each other fine. It would be kind of easy. Don’t you ever think…?”
“Easy?” Arthur feels a twist of low-level anger in the base of his skull. “What am I, a marriage of convenience? You don’t even know if I’m gay.”
“Don’t pull that. Of course I know. I fucking walked in on you in an empty classroom with Rob Valdez once! I know you saw me.”
Eames is tense underneath him. He sounds a little angry too. Arthur doesn’t want to fight with him so he just breaths evenly until the rise and fall of Eames’s chest matches his again. “Maybe I think about it sometimes,” he finally says.
His statement hangs unanswered for long moments and then Eames says, “You skipped out on spin the bottle.”
Arthur sighs. There is no such thing as a straightforward reply with Eames. “I’m not just trying to be difficult when I say that game is juvenile.”
“You cheated me out of it.”
“It seemed like it went just fine without me.”
Eames rolls onto his side, into Arthur. With his head already cradled by Eames’ arm they are touching all along their sides and Eames’ face is impossibly close to Arthur’s. He smells like coca cola and his eyelashes cast long shadows. Arthur stops breathing. “Not out of the game,” he whispers.
Then, before Arthur has a chance to reply, Eames’ mouth sinks over his in a startlingly deep kiss. It’s nothing like that hesitant press of lips on Eames’ front steps when he was thirteen, or the too-wet and awkward making out he’d done with Rob. Eames kisses hard and dangerous and brutal, and Arthur never considered himself a very good kisser, but something about the way Eames tilts his head makes Arthur respond exactly right.
They break to gasp for air and then Eames slides his fingers into Arthur’s hair and his leg slips between Arthur’s. They rush to press lips together again, mouths sliding frantically against each other. Eames kisses Arthur’s neck and just under his ear while Arthur shifts against Eames’ leg, clutching at the fabric of his shirt.
The grass feels hot underneath him, and just as Eames leans in to kiss Arthur’s collarbone, Arthur remembers how to think again. He thinks, what the fuck am I doing?
“Eames, stop for a second,” Arthur says. His voice comes out wrecked, but he can’t worry about it. All he can think is, stupid, impulsive Eames doing stupid, impulsive things just to see what will fucking happen and how will I ever be able to forget how good this is?
Eames rolls away from him instantly, surprising Arthur into sitting up. Eames is on his feet a moment later and Arthur stares up at him. He looks wild in the moonlight.
“Fuck,” Eames says. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m sorry, Arthur.” His voice is wavering into a low, shaky register.
“What are you-?”
“Fuck. Just, damn it. Please, just forget that I did that.” He runs his hands though his hair as if trying to still them. “Fuck.”
“No, Eames I just meant-” Arthur says, feeling panic building in his chest.
“I’ve got to…oh God.” Eames turns away, like he’s about to run. Arthur can’t find any words to force either of them to calm down. Usually he’s so good at that, slowing everything so that each moment can be dealt with in turn, but he feels wired hot and his mouth is still swollen and he can barely remember where he is or what he’s doing or anything except Eames and what Eames is thinking and doing and wanting.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Eames whispers, and he kneels and presses his lips to Arthur’s forehead impossibly gently, as if in absolution. Then he’s standing again, and he takes off across the garden climbing over the short wall and Arthur is alone.
“What the fuck?” Arthur asks no one. He clamours to his feet and swings himself over the wall, running to catch up with Eames. Arthur’s panting by the time he reaches the car. They’d parked a few blocks from the house earlier. Eames is trying to unlock the doors but his hands are visibly shaking and it’s making it hard for him.
“Hey, asshole,” Arthur says as he comes to a stop, taking the keys from Eames’ hand and pushing him up against the car door. “How the fuck am I supposed to get home if you just leave me here?”
Eames doesn’t say anything. He looks like a trapped animal, all darting eyes, hunching in on himself.
“What was that? What do you think you’re doing?”
“Look, I’m sorry, Arthur. I shouldn’t have done that. It was stupid of me to just spring that on you, and I wish you would forget it happened, and I’ll try to do the same and then…I don’t know. I’m sorry. Forget it.”
“No.” Arthur says, tipping his chin up defiantly. Eames shifts under Arthur’s arms like he’s going to try to run again, even though there wasn’t really anywhere to go. Arthur presses harder.
“Please.”
“I want to know why you did that. You always do these things and I think, Eames is being Eames, it’s just his ridiculous way. But I think it’s me who’s been ridiculous. I think I’m an idiot not to have seen this before. What do you want from me?” Arthur’s voice is dropping lower with tension and fear. Eames won’t look at him.
“Too much. I want too much,” Eames whispers.
“Oh.” Arthur’s pulse flutters in his throat. Perhaps, only now, he’d guessed but he hadn’t really believed….
“It’s the worst thing, wanting you, because you’re Arthur, and you’re my best friend, and just because we’re gay teenagers who like each other doesn’t mean I have to want to fuck you and I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. I just do. I want you and I want to kiss you and I feel like I’ll always want you this way.”
“And when you kissed me when I was thirteen, did you want me then?”
“Not like I do now. Maybe somehow, I don’t know.”
“When you got the tattoo?”
“Yes, probably then. Definitely then.”
“I’m such a fucking idiot.”
Arthur lets all his weight drop forward into Eames, so that Eames has to shift and catch him, holding them close together. Arthur leans in, kissing Eames messily, swallowing his surprised noise and cradling Eames’ head in both hands, tangling his fingers in the hair at the back of Eames’ neck. Eames kisses back right away, moving against Arthur like every part of him is involved in the kiss, not just his mouth.
“Arthur.” Eames murmurs into Arthur’s gasping mouth.
“But why didn’t you tell me before?” Arthur says, haltingly in the breaks between each meeting of their mouths.
“I didn’t know if you were gay, or if you even liked me, or-”
“Bullshit, holy fuck, please ,” Arthur shivers all down his body as Eames shoves his hands under Arthur’s shirt and against his bare skin, cupping his lower back and wrenching their hips tightly together. “But you knew ohmygod. You knew about Rob.”
“I suspected, I thought, maybe. Fucking hell, I don’t know. I’m sorry, Arthur,” Eames pulls back a moment so they can look at each other, face to face. “What…indication did I have from you? Why didn’t you say something to me?”
Arthur looks down. He hadn’t thought of it that way before, exactly. “Why should I think you would like me? You are on another plane of existence, Eames. It’s as if you fell into the house next door to me by accident, and I’m always waiting to wake up one morning and find out you’ve disappeared, because I must have dreamed you up.”
“But, Arthur, you’re brilliant. You’re exceptional. I…”
Eames stops talking, words blurring into his grin. The car is parked in the dark space between two skirts of light cast by the streetlamps. Eames’s teeth glint as he smiles. Eames spins them around pushing Arthur back into the car, held up by Eames’ hands on his hips so that he’s barely touching the ground. Arthur shudders and Eames slips his knee between Arthur’s legs. His head falls back as his lashes flutter and hits the metal hood of the car with a dull thunk.
“Ow…fuck,” he says. Eames laughs a little.
“Maybe we should go home,” Eames offers. As if in reflex, Arthur’s fists tighten around Eames’ shirt. A shiver of irrational fear curls up Arthur’s spine. He can’t help but think that Eames might come apart like so much smoke if Arthur releases him for only one moment.
“Hey, hey,” Eames whispers. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Arthur says. He means to sound annoyed that Eames would ask, but it comes out as genuine, reassuring himself as much as Eames. He forces himself to release his grip on Eames’ shirt, but Eames catches his hand and squeezes once before walking around to the driver’s side of the car.
Eames leaves his hand in Arthur’s lap for the ten-minute drive back to his house. Arthur feels tired and relaxed suddenly, sinking lazily into his seat as if the tension of more than just one evening of wanting Eames and not having him is flooding out. Years of tension, years soothed by Eames’ warm palm high on Arthur’s thigh.
It’s later than Eames had told his parents he’d be home, so they’re both quiet as they come in the house and creep up the stairs. Eames shuts his bedroom door and pushes Arthur up against it in a fluid motion. He’s still in costume, though it’s only shirtsleeves and pinstripe trousers. He’s lost the jacket and Arthur can’t remember what he did with the hat. It makes Arthur laugh quietly. Eames kisses his neck and locks the door. Arthur stills at the distinctive sound of chambers falling.
“You’ve never locked that before,” he whispers.
“Never been about to have sex with you before, either...” Eames says. “Are…you okay?” His fingers are inching up the bare skin of Arthur’s back, underneath his shirt.
“Yes,” Arthur says, and means it.
They fuck against the door; quiet, nearly furtive and all long lines of young bodies. They hold each other upright, always with their mouths against each other-not kissing, but gasping the same harsh breaths. Their fingers run over each other even after they’re worn out and collapsed the wrong way in Eames’ bed. They fall asleep slowly, hands clasped together and legs entwined with a kind of innocent possessiveness, holding one another in place.
---
In October, Arthur’s father hits him for the first and last time.
Arthur says, “Eames invited me to London for Christmas with his family, so I just wanted to ask if that was okay?”
His father says, “No.”
Arthur asks, “Why not?” Then he makes a mistake. “It’s not like you give a fuck about what I do anyway,” he says.
“Don’t speak to me that way, Arthur.”
Arthur makes a second mistake. “What makes you think you deserve to spoken to like my father? You don’t act like a father. You don’t love me like a father. So why should I love you like a son?”
“I’ve put a roof over your head and fed you. Whatever you need you fucking well have.”
The third mistake:
“The point isn’t to keep me alive. It’s to be a family. Men have done better for dogs.”
The thing about being with Eames over the summer is that Arthur realised there was a difference between being okay and being happy. Now, on the edge of all his thoughts about his father, there is the nagging sense that he shouldn’t have to be glad his father isn’t physically abusing him. There is no reason to be thankful for that. He can want more happiness; it isn’t greedy of him to want.
They are in the kitchen, Arthur’s father at the kitchen table reading the paper, and Arthur standing just inside the doorway, stopping off on his way up to his bedroom. Arthur’s father crosses the space between them in three strides. Arthur’s head snaps back as his father’s hand connects with his face. It is more the surprise and less the feel of his nose crunching under the flat of his father’s palm that makes all the air rush from Arthur’s lungs.
“You don’t have any fucking power in this world, Arthur. The sooner you learn that, the better off you are.”
His father’s hand comes up and closes around Arthur’s throat. He can feel the calluses on his father’s hands brush against the tender places Eames’s kisses had left across his skin only hours before.
“You think you’re smart. You think you’re fast. That doesn’t mean shit. You were born in this town and you’ll die here.” Arthur’s father is shouting, much too loud for how close his face is to Arthur’s.
Arthur’s breaths are short, high gasps. He can taste the trickle of blood from his nose in the back of his mouth. One hand scrabbles wildly at the fingers around his neck while he strikes out wildly with the other, catching a glancing blow against his father’s head that only makes him tighten his hold.
“What the hell are you doing?” Eames slams the kitchen door open. He stands frozen for a moment and then springs forward, throwing Arthur’s father off of him so hard that his father stumbles and falls backwards. Eames steps out in front of Arthur angling his body protectively in front of him.
“Don’t touch him again,” Eames says, in a low almost-whisper. He follows after the slumped man and stiffens like he’s about to kick him.
“Eames, stop,” Arthur wheezes. Eames freezes and turns. The tension drops out of him abruptly and he hugs one arm around his own middle.
“Yeah, of course,” he murmurs. He crosses back to Arthur, looking like he wants to grab him and pull him away but Eames hesitates before touching him, hands hovering just above Arthur’s arms, shaking as if it hurts him to have that inch of space between them.
“I’m okay,” Arthur says, gently. Eames’ hands settle on Arthur’s arms like a sigh and he leads him out the door. They make it to Eames’ backyard before they both stop by some unspoken mutual agreement and fall into the grass together. The outdoors seems only just big enough to hold the storm of conflicting feelings Arthur’s carrying with him.
“You almost hit my dad,” Arthur says after a few minutes.
“He did hit you,” Eames swallows thickly like his voice would waver otherwise. “You told me he’d never touched you. I can’t believe you lied about that, I can’t believe-”
“That was the first time. I didn’t lie to you. I wouldn’t.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Fuck. Is your nose okay? It doesn’t look broken, does it click if you touch it?”
“It’s not broken; it’s barely bleeding. Calm down, Eames.”
“Fuck,” Eames says, throwing himself back into the grass. He starfishes, limbs straining in all directions. Arthur sighs and leans down next to him, touching his nose gingerly. Eames rolls up onto one elbow and runs his finger gently along the bruise-marks Arthur’s father left on his neck. “Was it about London?”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
“I hate your father.”
“I know. I’ll have to go back in the morning.”
“You don’t have to.”
“He’s my dad. It’s not forever.”
“Don’t go back. It kills me the way you just act like none of it is so bad. I could protect you, but you won’t let me. I’m so fucking in love with you, and-”
They both go still.
“You’re in love with me?” Arthur says. Eames lies back, watching the movement of the wind through the trees. The leaves are changing colour and they rustle against each other with a light, autumnal whisper.
“Of course I am,” Eames says finally.
“I won’t go back,” Arthur says, and also: “I love you too.”
At least some things can be beautiful, if only in the feather-gentle space between them. Some things can be as easy as that.
---
Eames gets his acceptance letter from Oxford in January. Arthur is actually the one who gets it as he’s shovelling snow from the path in front the house and the mailman just hands him his own mail along with Eames’. He delivers Arthur’s letters to Eames’ now. Arthur doesn’t know how word of these kinds of things get around, and he’d rather it remain a mystery.
“You tell that boy congratulations; he deserves it. He’s too big for a town like this, don’t know why his parents moved here in the first place, really,” Mr Gregory says, smiling.
Arthur flips through the mail and finds the letter to which Mr Gregory must be referring. “How do you know it’s good news?” he asks.
“Feel the weight of that thing. Rejections are always light as a feather. You get to know these things when you’ve been a mailman as long as me.”
“Well, thanks Mr Gregory,” he says, feeling the press of the Christ Church seal in the top corner of the envelope beneath his fingertips.
Mr Gregory isn’t wrong. Half an hour later, Arthur watches Eames’ callused fingers around his pocket knife, slipping between the glue and paper neatly. Eames is chewing on his lower lip so fiercely Arthur takes pity on it and reaches up to brush his fingers across Eames’ mouth until he stops, still thrilled by the fact that he’s allowed.
Eames’ parents come in, bursting with barely contained anxiousness. Arthur folds his hands into his shirt so he doesn’t try to take the letter from Eames, prolonging this moment of not knowing, in which Eames can be two maybes at once; staying here with Arthur and going away to the university he most wants.
Eames opens it.
“I got in,” he says, sounding shocked.
Arthur isn’t too happy about the jumble of confusing emotional states fighting for dominance in his stomach. On one hand, he’s so genuinely happy for Eames, for the way the letter shakes with excitement in his hands as he reads Pleased to offer you…. On the other hand, he has this sick sense of jealousy in the pit of his stomach, which he hates, but can’t ignore. That tiny part of him is a little angry that Eames has an out. Eames has always had an out where Arthur never did. The closest Arthur has to escape is Eames.
The worst feeling is the sense of looming loss. In terms of their relationship, he knows he and Eames could make it through something like this. If Arthur were the type, he’d believe that he and Eames were made just for each other. Except, England is very far away, and three years is a very long time. It’s not as if Eames is going to come back and live here again after university; Eames wouldn’t promise it, and Arthur wouldn’t ask him to. Maybe long distance could work for three years, but it couldn’t work forever. Arthur doesn’t want Eames far away.
Eames’ parents enfold him in massive hugs, and Eames’ dad declares they’re all going out for dinner to celebrate. They go into the other room to make reservations, and Arthur is left standing with Eames alone again. He doesn’t know what to say to make Eames understand that Arthur wants him to go and wants him to stay and that he’s happy and miserable at the same time.
“You don’t have to pretend to be happy,” Eames says, after a moment. Arthur hates himself a little more, because now that Eames isn’t tightly schooling his expression, Arthur realises that he’s forcing joy for the sake of his parents. Arthur’s clearly not doing a very good job of being supportive. “Maybe I won’t even go. I’ll get an acceptance from the University of Chicago; you know I will.”
“Don’t be stupid, Eames. I’m going to hate that you aren’t here, absolutely. But, I’ll love that you’re there since it’s where you want to be. Look at me and tell me I’m lying when I say I am so fucking proud.”
Eames moves towards him and presses his forehead against Arthur’s. It doesn’t feel like they’re teenagers anymore. Eames feels vivid and close and sharp and like he could hurt Arthur, like he already has hurt him even as much as he’s loved him.
Eames’ breath is soft with Arthur’s, and the long, dark sweep of his eyelashes flutter, tangling with Arthur’s as he blinks. Nothing about them is young, right now. It makes Arthur a little scared to realise that he is suddenly part of the real world, that as much as he’s felt like he was twice as much an adult as most people he’s met, as much as he knows about difficult things, it’s really happening now.
“Maybe I don’t want to leave you. Maybe I’ll stay because I want to stay, not because you need me to,” Eames whispers.
“No, Eames; it’s okay,” Arthur murmurs. “It’s okay for you to leave me because you don’t want to.”
“But, Arthur….” Eames starts.
“Going away doesn’t mean you’re losing me. I swear I won’t lose you without a fight,” Arthur interrupts.
Eames smiles, wryly. “You don’t do anything without a fight.”
“Excuse me, but I’ll have you know I’m the composed and sensible one out of the two of us.” Arthur says, turning his chin up.
“At least that’s what you’ve fooled everyone into thinking,” Eames offers. Arthur shrugs a concession.
Eames’ mother comes back into the room, and Arthur steps back to put a reasonable distance between them. Their relationship is probably the worst kept secret in the world, but it’s still technically a secret.
Arthur decides not to tag along on their family dinner. He’ been trying to give Eames’ parent’s some space so they won’t seem him as to much of a burden, living with them.
He climbs up the stairs to Eames’ bedroom and goes to sleep earlier than normal. Eames gets back from dinner, but he doesn’t come upstairs for until around two in the morning. He trips over the camp bed that Arthur has been supposedly sleeping on for the last few months. Arthur blinks sleepily, waking at the sound. His lips are blue with cold and he fits his freezing hands under Arthur’s shirt to warm them up. Arthur nearly shrieks.
“Eames,” he whispers instead, shivering. “Fuck, that’s cold. What have you been doing?”
“Making snow angels,” Eames whispers back. He sheds his wet boots on the floor.
“You are a nutcase.” Arthur sighs and crawls back under the covers, rolling to the edge to make room for Eames.
They have close, quiet sex, silence broken only by the sound of harsh breathing, always trying to press together as much bare skin as possible. They both clutch at each other a little too tightly and Eames’ fingers leave desperate bruises on Arthur’s hips that he stares at in the mirror for a long time the next morning, thinking More things than these will fade.
---
Arthur’s last year of high school can be described as grey. Arthur feels endlessly grateful to Eames’ parents for letting him live with them even after Eames is gone. They’re brilliant of course, but he hates feeling indebted to them.
Time passes, and he takes his SATs and gets predictably good marks. He feels like he spends most of the year asleep. Eames comes home for Christmas and Arthur wakes up for a little while; and he leaves and Arthur goes straight back to bed.
In the spring, Arthur applies to West Point. Eames comes home for Easter, and they have three weeks of laying in the grass in the backyard, hands palm to palm like some kind of mid-American Romeo and Juliet, and Arthur suspends the outside world in favour of the one that blooms up between them when they’re together.
Then Arthur tells Eames he’s been accepted to West Point.
They fight.
“It’s the fucking U. S. military, Arthur. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Eames says, voice flat and quiet. “What are you trying to prove?”
“I’m not trying to prove anything,” Arthur says back, emotionlessly. They’re in Eames’ kitchen; it’s the middle of the day and his parent’s are still at work. Eames was watching Arthur folding laundry, but now they’re just standing in the on opposite sides of the table, shoulders squared like they’re about to face off.
They don’t fight like other people fight, because Arthur doesn’t yell; he hates yelling more than anything. Eames doesn’t yell because yelling at Arthur is almost unforgivable - it makes Eames sick to think of yelling at Arthur. It would be too close to the way Arthur’s father is.
“Really, Arthur. Are you sure? This has nothing to do with your father? I’m here to tell you you’re fucking fooling yourself if you think that the way he is will ever change.”
“You really think that I’m that stupid? This has nothing to do with him. You think everything that you don’t love about me is a product of a shitty upbringing and you act as if I should be forgiven for it. I’m sorry to tell you, Eames, but some of my ideas are actually just mine.”
“I know you have different ideas. That’s fine. But this isn’t just some idea - it’s your life. Can’t you see that this is some stupid act of desperation? You don’t have to become canon fodder to get out of this town.”
“West Point graduates aren’t canon fodder, Eames. I’m doing something real with myself, here. I was so good about Oxford. I wish you’d…I wish…”
Eames cuts over Arthur before he can finish his sentence and his voice is starting to gain a little volume. “You don’t get to bring Oxford into this. That ship has sailed. It’s cruel to hold that over my head.”
“I’m not holding it over your head, I’m just saying you could be proud of me.” He hates that he sounds like a whiny, underappreciated child.
“You aren’t made for the military, Arthur. You just aren’t.” Eames says it like its some kind of obvious fact that Arthur is too stupid to see and it makes him even angrier.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean. You’re wrong-and you are wrong sometimes, I hope you know. I’m being practical. I want to get out of this town and I don’t want to come back.”
“So get a fucking scholarship to some brilliant uni, Arthur,” Eames growls. “I’d pay for you to go where ever you wanted if you don’t get one. You know that, anyway.”
“Damn it!” Arthur looks wounded. “I can’t…you know I can’t accept something like that. I’ve lived out of your pocket since I was eleven, I’m not that kid now. I certainly don’t want to be.”
“You’d get a scholarship.”
“I don’t want a scholarship. I don’t need or want your money or anyone elses’ I don’t want to go to another college, I don’t want to just get out. I want to go to the place I fucking applied, which is West Point.”
“I want you to not be the extension of a bureaucratic authoritarian killing machine. Is that so wrong? I don’t want you doing it because of your stupid dad and his stupid war hero past.”
Arthur’s mouth twists sourly. “Fuck you, Eames. It’s not my dad, I don’t care about my fucking dad. It’s because of my mother, okay? My mother was in the military, too, and she died for her country, and if it was good enough for her, it’s fucking well good enough for me. I’d be good in the military. I can be strong and sharp like she was.”
That shuts Eames up for a minute. Arthur’s never said a word about his mother before. He’s still vibrating with anger, all pent up and nothing to do with it.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” he says, finally harsh and nearly whispering. “That’s a different world that I don’t want to live in. You’re going to be farther away from me than just an ocean and part of a continent and I don’t think I’ll be able to follow you there.”
The cage of hot, seething anger in Arthur’s chest breaks apart and he slumps against the wall. Eames isn’t right about the military being the wrong place for Arthur. There is something quick and precise and deadly in Arthur - a part of him he doesn’t understand - which needs to get out and be used, and there isn’t any other good place for it. But Eames might be right about this.
“Try, Eames,” Arthur says. “Please just try to stay with me. I’m going to West Point because I want to, but I’m only fucking happy when I know you’re still mine.”
---
(PART III)
(PART I)
(PART III)
Part II
Arthur is lingering around the front doors to the auditorium, fanning himself from the May heat with one of the last few programmes he’s meant to be handing out for the production of Guys and Dolls, when Eames appears out the doorway down the hall. His trilby is tipped at a jaunty angle as a finishing touch to his costume, but there are still three paper napkins shoved into the collar of his shirt to protect it from liberal application of foundation.
“Let me get those for you,” Arthur whispers, letting the auditorium door snick shut fully as he moves across the wood floors on silent feet to tug the tissues from Eames shirt. “What are you doing out here anyway; curtain goes up in about two minutes.”
“It’s the last night; I came for luck. And also, to make sure you’re going to the cast party.”
“I thought they were only inviting juniors and seniors in stage crew along. Laura said they were trying to limit the numbers so people can bring dates. Jamie is throwing what he’s calling a ‘leftovers’ party for the rest of us.”
Eames grins deviously. “You don’t even like Jamie. You’ll have to be my date.”
Arthur rolls his eyes, “I really shouldn’t go.”
“Come on…”
Arthur studies Eames closely for a minute. Eames really does seem to want Arthur to go with him, so he finally nods his head in acquiescence.
“You’ll come along, then?” The stage band is starting up in the other room, and Eames really, absolutely shouldn’t be out here still.
“Yes, yes, fine,” Arthur promises.
“And what about my good luck?” Eames asks. He’s looming in very close, close enough that Arthur can see that he’s wearing a little eyeliner just to make his eyes stand out, and that his mouth is too red from a flush of nervous energy. For one wild moment, Arthur thinks I could just lean right over and kiss him. A kiss for luck is fair enough. He swallows and quickly puts just enough room for air between them.
“Break a leg,” he whispers, voice cracking. Eames face is shuttered, but Arthur can’t tell if he’s just trying to get himself into character for the play, or if he’s hiding some other emotion.
“Eames,” a voice calls from down the hallway, in that harsh whisper of someone who is pretending to be concerned the audience might hear them. “Get your ass back in here - you have fifteen seconds.”
Eames tips his trilby and dashes back down the hall. Arthur watches him go, feeling a little light-headed.
“Fuck,” he whispers under his breath. A few late arrivals come bustling into the empty lobby. They whisper their apologies and Arthur quietly opens the door, allowing them to file one by one to their seats. The curtains are still closed, but the lights are dim, and he sees Mrs Linde give the signal to the conductor to start the overture.
Arthur sets the rest of the programmes down on his ticket desk and circles around to the back of the theatre where the rest of the stage crew are sorting through props and making sure all the correct ones are in boxes labelled for each scene. They’ve checked and double-checked, and at this point it’s just something for them all to do while they wait for the first changeover.
The first people are crossing onto the stage now, and from Arthur’s position - he’s practically onstage; they always put him here because he’s the quietest - he can read the print on the newspapers in the stand on set.
He’s sort of excited. Eames is approximately two leagues ahead of almost everyone else in the production. When Eames plays a part he isn’t playing it, he’s being it, like he was never anyone else. There is something about watching people who are good at what they do that makes Arthur breathless.
After the production is over, Eames comes and finds Arthur while he’s sorting the Hot Box girls’ costumes from their first performance.
“Right,” Eames says. “I have finished placating my many adoring fans. Elise says the party has pretty much already started. Are you finished here?”
“Yeah, just let me get my bag,” Arthur responds. He stops a moment on his way to the other room, just next to Eames as he passes by him in the doorway.
“By the way, you were fucking amazing.”
Eames looks surprised, and happy. “Yeah?” he asks.
“I thought you were a genius last year, but I think you’ve gotten even better, were it possible.”
“Careful, Arthur, I’ll grow an ego if you continue on like this.” Eames looks down when he smiles. He might be blushing very slightly.
“It’s too late for that,” Arthur says shaking his head in mock-sadness, knowing he ought to stop complimenting Eames now, lest he say something embarrassing.
The drive across town to Elise’s is only five minutes. Arthur’s been many times before because Eames is pretty good friends with Elise and he often tags along with Eames in what he hopes is not an annoying, younger kid way.
On the drive over, Arthur tells Eames about the near disaster they had trying to move the newsstand off stage and how they almost crushed the portly kid playing Nicely Nicely with it and Eames is in fits of hysterics, driving recklessly down the road. By the time they get there, he’s wheezing and his foundation is looking smeary in some places and powdery in others, but it doesn’t really make him any less attractive.
Eames gets out of the car and Arthur pauses for a moment, leaning his head back against the seat and closes his eyes tiredly.
It’s another year and a half before Eames goes to college. Arthur’s caught between recognising that he’ll never manage to have so much as a crush on someone new when Eames is around being everything Arthur wants, and feeling physically sick at the thought of life without seeing Eames everyday.
Eames knocks on Arthur’s window. “Come on,” he says, sounding hollow through the glass. Arthur gets out of the door and Eames slings a broad, friendly arm across Arthur’s shoulders and puts his trilby on Arthur’s head.
“I look ridiculous now,” Arthur complains.
“That’s the point,” Eames declares. “Besides, I think it’s very dashing.” He accepts a red plastic cup from a girl at the door and then takes one for Arthur too and passes it over. Arthur frowns with distaste. “I don’t really...”
A shadow passes over Eames face. “Obviously,” he says. “It’s just to hold. You have to look like you’re drinking or people will push it on you. I won’t either.”
Arthur shakes his head. “I don’t mind. Just because I’ve got bad experiences doesn’t mean everyone does. I’m not judging you.”
Eames tilts his chin up like this means something important to him. They’re halfway through the house now, and Eames pauses and empties his cup into a potted tree and fills it with coke from an unopened litre bottle. “If anyone asks,” he says, “It’s half vodka.”
Arthur means it when he says it doesn’t bother him to be around people drinking, but he can’t help but be a little pleased at Eames’ thoughtfulness.
A few hours later, Arthur is talking to three girls he knows from his math class, which he takes with the grade above. There is some random boy passed out on the couch between them.
“You should be teaching that class,” Arthur says to the girl closest to him. She has to correct the teacher regularly and they all joke that she should stop being so polite about it and just kick him out of the room.
“Who would do the photocopying then?” her friend laughs. She was playing one of the Mission Band members and her hair is pulled back from her face with military severity for the role.
“That is kind of true,” says the third girl and Arthur nods along with them. Eames barrels in from the backyard, leaving the screen door wide open behind him. He makes a beeline for Arthur, stepping carelessly over a few people sprawling on the floor. After side stepping a couple dancing to the crappy music, Eames collapses onto the arm of the sofa Arthur is sharing with his math friends and the drunk guy.
“Are you talking about schoolwork,” Eames asks, as if it’s a personal insult for Arthur to do so. “Don’t be so dull. It’s as if you want people to think you’re dull when we both know you aren’t.” Eames leans in conspiratorially to the girl nearest him. He has to lean all the way over Arthur to cup his hand around her ear and he’s practically lying in Arthur’s lap, a gap of skin appearing as his shirt slides up with the arch of his back.
“I bet you didn’t know that Arthur can recite a few of Baudelaire’s prose poems in the original French, eh?” Eames murmurs with a sultry growl. Arthur swallows thickly.
“Normal people don’t find that interesting, Eames.” Arthur says flatly, more in order to avoid sounding breathless than to show annoyance. “What are you doing over here anyway?”
Instead of safely removing himself back to his section of the sofa, Eames leans the rest of his weight on Arthur, lying sprawled across him with his head in Arthur’s lap. He stretches like a cat. The back of Arthur’s neck feels hot. “Some of the girls are starting up a game of spin the bottle. I’ve come to offer you an invitation.”
“Spin the bottle?” Arthur says, already shaking his head. “How old do you think we are?”
“Oh, come on, Arthur. It’s just for fun,” he bites his lower lip a bit, making his thinking face. Arthur’s sure whatever reason Eames next comes up with to get him to join in is going to be horribly embarrassing so he gives Eames a look to convey his seriousness.
“I won’t do it,” he says. Eames sighs and drags himself to his feet, pretending to be forlorn.
“So boring,” Eames whines.
Arthur shrugs as if to say, you know that already. Eames sighs heavily as he wrenches himself to his feet. Arthur watches him amble aimlessly away, caught in a crowd of people lofting an empty glass beer bottle around.
Arthur rubs the back of his neck as if he might be able to brush away the fact that he’s turned on from having Eames close and on top of him. This whole last year, it seems like Eames has been more physical with him than when they were younger, but Arthur is pretty sure he only feels that way because every time Eames touches him he can feel the press of skin for hours afterwards.
“Arthur….” He turns abruptly, having nearly forgotten the three girls are sitting right there. The girl who’s spoken is avoiding Arthur’s eyes when he looks up at her. She looks like she thinks she might regret what she’s about to say and wants to say it anyway.
“What?” Arthur asks.
She lowers her voice to very quiet, nearly whispering. “I get that this town is not…you know, accommodating. But, I wanted you to know that I think you guys seem really good together.”
“What?” Arthur asks, again, blankly. “Eames and I. How do you mean?” He’s sure she can’t mean what she sounds like she means.
“You know,” she pauses and turns to her friend as if wanting confirmation on her theory. “You make a nice couple.”
Arthur tenses up completely, clenching his hands and looking around furtively. He’s stuck between the crawling sensation that his father is just around the corner, overhearing this conversation and a feeling that’s something like embarrassment or shame. It’s not because these three girls have found out some half-truth, but because it’s only a half-truth, and he’s going to have to explain that he doesn’t have Eames and they aren’t together at all, even though he wishes they were so much that it makes it difficult for him to breath sometimes.
“I think you guys have misunderstood something,” he says, leaning back into the sofa and pinching the bridge of his nose against a sudden headache. “We’re not going out,” he sighs.
The girls all look genuinely shocked. Arthur’s glad they weren’t just trying to get a rise out of him. It’d be pretty awful if they were playing some kind of trick.
“We’re really not,” he insists.
“But….” One of the girls starts talking, confused, as if some fact that she thought was indisputable had changed. “The way he is with you is like... My boyfriend isn’t even that sweet with me.”
Arthur laughs dryly. “Eames?” he asks, “Sweet? I think you’re confused.”
“What I mean is, you’re always hanging all over each other, and he drives you everywhere and takes you to parties and you carry each other’s backpacks and your arms brush when you walk and you get each other - you really know each other.”
Arthur shrugs. “Sorry to disappoint, but the touching thing is just Eames. I dunno…he’s English. Maybe that explains it. And the rest of it…we’ve lived next door to each other for almost six years now. If it seems like I know him so well, it’s because I do. He’s not into me like that. If he were, he wouldn’t be able to hide it.”
“But you like him?” the quietest of the three asks.
Arthur winces and then, before he can stop himself, nods. They sit in silence for a few minutes. Arthur refuses to look up.
“He’s not hiding it,” she says, finally.
“What do you mean?” Arthur mumbles.
“He likes you. I think he really likes you. But I think you can’t see it because he’s not hiding it at all and it’s so obvious it’s too big for you to see.”
Arthur smiles at the idea, thinking it’s half-beautiful, half-absurd. He shakes his head and presses his palms to his eyes to make sure there isn’t any chance he’ll start crying; Arthur hates getting emotional. “I’m sorry, I just think you’re wrong. You don’t know him like I do. You don’t know us.”
The quiet girl shrugs and gets to her feet, grabbing an empty plastic cup to go for another drink. “We’ll have to agree to disagree,” she says, and disappears into the crowd of people. Arthur turns to the other two girls, looking for confirmation that he’s the sane one and the other girl was just talking nonsense, but they just raise their eyebrows as if to say, if only you understood.
Arthur hates how sure some outsider can be about his life just because they aren’t in the soupy, disastrous the middle of it.
---
Arthur goes out into the back garden. Most of the people who were out here before have migrated into Eames’ now massive game of spin the bottle, which Arthur had to navigate through to get to the back door.
Eames gave him a little half-wave as Arthur was trekking through the crowds and Arthur feels bad because he blanked Eames. It’s not Eames fault if some girl tipped his thought process into an awful circle of if only, if only, if only. It’s not Eames fault he’s just so…so…Eames.
When Arthur meets someone, there is usually a point well into the friendship when he realises that he’ll never have to worry about crushing on them because he knows so much about them. He ultimately hates and loves too many pieces of them to add romance into the mix. Unfortunately, with Eames, Arthur reached that moment and then kept going, just passed it by until he was too far gone to even turn around.
He stares out at the garden. Everything smudges into darkness a few feet away from him like the fade-to-black at the end of a film. Arthur’s getting tired of being sixteen and not knowing a fucking thing about where he’s going or what he’s supposed to be doing. Shouldn’t there be some kind of map? He thinks, annoyed by his own gloomy thoughts.
“Hey,” someone says from behind him. Arthur recognises the voice and tread as Eames before he turns around. “Are you okay? You looked a bit weird when you walked past before.”
“I’m fine,” Arthur says, leaning back into the chair. He really is fine. He wouldn’t be a proper teenager if he didn’t indulge himself with a little time for angst every now and then.
“Right,” Eames says. He sits in the grass at Arthur’s feet.
“You should go back in. Your spin the bottle looked like it was a hit.”
“It was getting boring,” Eames says. His mouth is smeared with other people’s lipstick.
“Sometimes life is boring, you know. Things can’t be interesting every second of every day.”
“You are,” Eames says, like this is an obvious fact.
“Even when I’m sleeping or reading or watering the grass?” Arthur asks.
“You always interest me. Especially when you water the grass. It make me nostalgic for our first meeting.” Eames smiles demurely and flutters his eyelashes.
“I rue the day I told you that you were a good actor.”
Eames cracks a real grin and tugs Arthur’s sleeve to pull him down into the grass beside him. “It’s dewy,” Arthur says in protest, but he goes easily, anyway. Eames leaves his arm slung out so his shoulder pillows Arthur’s head. Eames has a whole collection of tattoos now; Arthur can see traces of the geometric patterns circling Eames’ upper arm and a few lines of script. He tries to imagine what it would feel like to trace them all slowly and carefully with his fingertip.
“Those girls I was talking to before thought we were dating,” he says, attempting to sound mildly amused. He wouldn’t have mentioned it, but it’s dark and the sounds of the house are muffled, putting him in that particular mood where keeping secrets from Eames seems profoundly wrong.
Eames is silent, and Arthur listens to his breathing, soft and even, until he starts to get nervous. “Eames?” he asks. “Don’t worry, I told them they we weren’t.”
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like?”
Now it’s Arthur’s turn to be silent for too long. What is the right thing to say to a question like that? He certainly isn’t going blurting out the truth.
He tries to laugh it off, “Wouldn’t be that different from now, I guess.” Arthur says wryly. “I already buy you dinner and hold doors open for you.”
“No, I mean really. We like each other fine. It would be kind of easy. Don’t you ever think…?”
“Easy?” Arthur feels a twist of low-level anger in the base of his skull. “What am I, a marriage of convenience? You don’t even know if I’m gay.”
“Don’t pull that. Of course I know. I fucking walked in on you in an empty classroom with Rob Valdez once! I know you saw me.”
Eames is tense underneath him. He sounds a little angry too. Arthur doesn’t want to fight with him so he just breaths evenly until the rise and fall of Eames’s chest matches his again. “Maybe I think about it sometimes,” he finally says.
His statement hangs unanswered for long moments and then Eames says, “You skipped out on spin the bottle.”
Arthur sighs. There is no such thing as a straightforward reply with Eames. “I’m not just trying to be difficult when I say that game is juvenile.”
“You cheated me out of it.”
“It seemed like it went just fine without me.”
Eames rolls onto his side, into Arthur. With his head already cradled by Eames’ arm they are touching all along their sides and Eames’ face is impossibly close to Arthur’s. He smells like coca cola and his eyelashes cast long shadows. Arthur stops breathing. “Not out of the game,” he whispers.
Then, before Arthur has a chance to reply, Eames’ mouth sinks over his in a startlingly deep kiss. It’s nothing like that hesitant press of lips on Eames’ front steps when he was thirteen, or the too-wet and awkward making out he’d done with Rob. Eames kisses hard and dangerous and brutal, and Arthur never considered himself a very good kisser, but something about the way Eames tilts his head makes Arthur respond exactly right.
They break to gasp for air and then Eames slides his fingers into Arthur’s hair and his leg slips between Arthur’s. They rush to press lips together again, mouths sliding frantically against each other. Eames kisses Arthur’s neck and just under his ear while Arthur shifts against Eames’ leg, clutching at the fabric of his shirt.
The grass feels hot underneath him, and just as Eames leans in to kiss Arthur’s collarbone, Arthur remembers how to think again. He thinks, what the fuck am I doing?
“Eames, stop for a second,” Arthur says. His voice comes out wrecked, but he can’t worry about it. All he can think is, stupid, impulsive Eames doing stupid, impulsive things just to see what will fucking happen and how will I ever be able to forget how good this is?
Eames rolls away from him instantly, surprising Arthur into sitting up. Eames is on his feet a moment later and Arthur stares up at him. He looks wild in the moonlight.
“Fuck,” Eames says. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m sorry, Arthur.” His voice is wavering into a low, shaky register.
“What are you-?”
“Fuck. Just, damn it. Please, just forget that I did that.” He runs his hands though his hair as if trying to still them. “Fuck.”
“No, Eames I just meant-” Arthur says, feeling panic building in his chest.
“I’ve got to…oh God.” Eames turns away, like he’s about to run. Arthur can’t find any words to force either of them to calm down. Usually he’s so good at that, slowing everything so that each moment can be dealt with in turn, but he feels wired hot and his mouth is still swollen and he can barely remember where he is or what he’s doing or anything except Eames and what Eames is thinking and doing and wanting.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Eames whispers, and he kneels and presses his lips to Arthur’s forehead impossibly gently, as if in absolution. Then he’s standing again, and he takes off across the garden climbing over the short wall and Arthur is alone.
“What the fuck?” Arthur asks no one. He clamours to his feet and swings himself over the wall, running to catch up with Eames. Arthur’s panting by the time he reaches the car. They’d parked a few blocks from the house earlier. Eames is trying to unlock the doors but his hands are visibly shaking and it’s making it hard for him.
“Hey, asshole,” Arthur says as he comes to a stop, taking the keys from Eames’ hand and pushing him up against the car door. “How the fuck am I supposed to get home if you just leave me here?”
Eames doesn’t say anything. He looks like a trapped animal, all darting eyes, hunching in on himself.
“What was that? What do you think you’re doing?”
“Look, I’m sorry, Arthur. I shouldn’t have done that. It was stupid of me to just spring that on you, and I wish you would forget it happened, and I’ll try to do the same and then…I don’t know. I’m sorry. Forget it.”
“No.” Arthur says, tipping his chin up defiantly. Eames shifts under Arthur’s arms like he’s going to try to run again, even though there wasn’t really anywhere to go. Arthur presses harder.
“Please.”
“I want to know why you did that. You always do these things and I think, Eames is being Eames, it’s just his ridiculous way. But I think it’s me who’s been ridiculous. I think I’m an idiot not to have seen this before. What do you want from me?” Arthur’s voice is dropping lower with tension and fear. Eames won’t look at him.
“Too much. I want too much,” Eames whispers.
“Oh.” Arthur’s pulse flutters in his throat. Perhaps, only now, he’d guessed but he hadn’t really believed….
“It’s the worst thing, wanting you, because you’re Arthur, and you’re my best friend, and just because we’re gay teenagers who like each other doesn’t mean I have to want to fuck you and I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. I just do. I want you and I want to kiss you and I feel like I’ll always want you this way.”
“And when you kissed me when I was thirteen, did you want me then?”
“Not like I do now. Maybe somehow, I don’t know.”
“When you got the tattoo?”
“Yes, probably then. Definitely then.”
“I’m such a fucking idiot.”
Arthur lets all his weight drop forward into Eames, so that Eames has to shift and catch him, holding them close together. Arthur leans in, kissing Eames messily, swallowing his surprised noise and cradling Eames’ head in both hands, tangling his fingers in the hair at the back of Eames’ neck. Eames kisses back right away, moving against Arthur like every part of him is involved in the kiss, not just his mouth.
“Arthur.” Eames murmurs into Arthur’s gasping mouth.
“But why didn’t you tell me before?” Arthur says, haltingly in the breaks between each meeting of their mouths.
“I didn’t know if you were gay, or if you even liked me, or-”
“Bullshit, holy fuck, please ,” Arthur shivers all down his body as Eames shoves his hands under Arthur’s shirt and against his bare skin, cupping his lower back and wrenching their hips tightly together. “But you knew ohmygod. You knew about Rob.”
“I suspected, I thought, maybe. Fucking hell, I don’t know. I’m sorry, Arthur,” Eames pulls back a moment so they can look at each other, face to face. “What…indication did I have from you? Why didn’t you say something to me?”
Arthur looks down. He hadn’t thought of it that way before, exactly. “Why should I think you would like me? You are on another plane of existence, Eames. It’s as if you fell into the house next door to me by accident, and I’m always waiting to wake up one morning and find out you’ve disappeared, because I must have dreamed you up.”
“But, Arthur, you’re brilliant. You’re exceptional. I…”
Eames stops talking, words blurring into his grin. The car is parked in the dark space between two skirts of light cast by the streetlamps. Eames’s teeth glint as he smiles. Eames spins them around pushing Arthur back into the car, held up by Eames’ hands on his hips so that he’s barely touching the ground. Arthur shudders and Eames slips his knee between Arthur’s legs. His head falls back as his lashes flutter and hits the metal hood of the car with a dull thunk.
“Ow…fuck,” he says. Eames laughs a little.
“Maybe we should go home,” Eames offers. As if in reflex, Arthur’s fists tighten around Eames’ shirt. A shiver of irrational fear curls up Arthur’s spine. He can’t help but think that Eames might come apart like so much smoke if Arthur releases him for only one moment.
“Hey, hey,” Eames whispers. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Arthur says. He means to sound annoyed that Eames would ask, but it comes out as genuine, reassuring himself as much as Eames. He forces himself to release his grip on Eames’ shirt, but Eames catches his hand and squeezes once before walking around to the driver’s side of the car.
Eames leaves his hand in Arthur’s lap for the ten-minute drive back to his house. Arthur feels tired and relaxed suddenly, sinking lazily into his seat as if the tension of more than just one evening of wanting Eames and not having him is flooding out. Years of tension, years soothed by Eames’ warm palm high on Arthur’s thigh.
It’s later than Eames had told his parents he’d be home, so they’re both quiet as they come in the house and creep up the stairs. Eames shuts his bedroom door and pushes Arthur up against it in a fluid motion. He’s still in costume, though it’s only shirtsleeves and pinstripe trousers. He’s lost the jacket and Arthur can’t remember what he did with the hat. It makes Arthur laugh quietly. Eames kisses his neck and locks the door. Arthur stills at the distinctive sound of chambers falling.
“You’ve never locked that before,” he whispers.
“Never been about to have sex with you before, either...” Eames says. “Are…you okay?” His fingers are inching up the bare skin of Arthur’s back, underneath his shirt.
“Yes,” Arthur says, and means it.
They fuck against the door; quiet, nearly furtive and all long lines of young bodies. They hold each other upright, always with their mouths against each other-not kissing, but gasping the same harsh breaths. Their fingers run over each other even after they’re worn out and collapsed the wrong way in Eames’ bed. They fall asleep slowly, hands clasped together and legs entwined with a kind of innocent possessiveness, holding one another in place.
---
In October, Arthur’s father hits him for the first and last time.
Arthur says, “Eames invited me to London for Christmas with his family, so I just wanted to ask if that was okay?”
His father says, “No.”
Arthur asks, “Why not?” Then he makes a mistake. “It’s not like you give a fuck about what I do anyway,” he says.
“Don’t speak to me that way, Arthur.”
Arthur makes a second mistake. “What makes you think you deserve to spoken to like my father? You don’t act like a father. You don’t love me like a father. So why should I love you like a son?”
“I’ve put a roof over your head and fed you. Whatever you need you fucking well have.”
The third mistake:
“The point isn’t to keep me alive. It’s to be a family. Men have done better for dogs.”
The thing about being with Eames over the summer is that Arthur realised there was a difference between being okay and being happy. Now, on the edge of all his thoughts about his father, there is the nagging sense that he shouldn’t have to be glad his father isn’t physically abusing him. There is no reason to be thankful for that. He can want more happiness; it isn’t greedy of him to want.
They are in the kitchen, Arthur’s father at the kitchen table reading the paper, and Arthur standing just inside the doorway, stopping off on his way up to his bedroom. Arthur’s father crosses the space between them in three strides. Arthur’s head snaps back as his father’s hand connects with his face. It is more the surprise and less the feel of his nose crunching under the flat of his father’s palm that makes all the air rush from Arthur’s lungs.
“You don’t have any fucking power in this world, Arthur. The sooner you learn that, the better off you are.”
His father’s hand comes up and closes around Arthur’s throat. He can feel the calluses on his father’s hands brush against the tender places Eames’s kisses had left across his skin only hours before.
“You think you’re smart. You think you’re fast. That doesn’t mean shit. You were born in this town and you’ll die here.” Arthur’s father is shouting, much too loud for how close his face is to Arthur’s.
Arthur’s breaths are short, high gasps. He can taste the trickle of blood from his nose in the back of his mouth. One hand scrabbles wildly at the fingers around his neck while he strikes out wildly with the other, catching a glancing blow against his father’s head that only makes him tighten his hold.
“What the hell are you doing?” Eames slams the kitchen door open. He stands frozen for a moment and then springs forward, throwing Arthur’s father off of him so hard that his father stumbles and falls backwards. Eames steps out in front of Arthur angling his body protectively in front of him.
“Don’t touch him again,” Eames says, in a low almost-whisper. He follows after the slumped man and stiffens like he’s about to kick him.
“Eames, stop,” Arthur wheezes. Eames freezes and turns. The tension drops out of him abruptly and he hugs one arm around his own middle.
“Yeah, of course,” he murmurs. He crosses back to Arthur, looking like he wants to grab him and pull him away but Eames hesitates before touching him, hands hovering just above Arthur’s arms, shaking as if it hurts him to have that inch of space between them.
“I’m okay,” Arthur says, gently. Eames’ hands settle on Arthur’s arms like a sigh and he leads him out the door. They make it to Eames’ backyard before they both stop by some unspoken mutual agreement and fall into the grass together. The outdoors seems only just big enough to hold the storm of conflicting feelings Arthur’s carrying with him.
“You almost hit my dad,” Arthur says after a few minutes.
“He did hit you,” Eames swallows thickly like his voice would waver otherwise. “You told me he’d never touched you. I can’t believe you lied about that, I can’t believe-”
“That was the first time. I didn’t lie to you. I wouldn’t.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Fuck. Is your nose okay? It doesn’t look broken, does it click if you touch it?”
“It’s not broken; it’s barely bleeding. Calm down, Eames.”
“Fuck,” Eames says, throwing himself back into the grass. He starfishes, limbs straining in all directions. Arthur sighs and leans down next to him, touching his nose gingerly. Eames rolls up onto one elbow and runs his finger gently along the bruise-marks Arthur’s father left on his neck. “Was it about London?”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
“I hate your father.”
“I know. I’ll have to go back in the morning.”
“You don’t have to.”
“He’s my dad. It’s not forever.”
“Don’t go back. It kills me the way you just act like none of it is so bad. I could protect you, but you won’t let me. I’m so fucking in love with you, and-”
They both go still.
“You’re in love with me?” Arthur says. Eames lies back, watching the movement of the wind through the trees. The leaves are changing colour and they rustle against each other with a light, autumnal whisper.
“Of course I am,” Eames says finally.
“I won’t go back,” Arthur says, and also: “I love you too.”
At least some things can be beautiful, if only in the feather-gentle space between them. Some things can be as easy as that.
---
Eames gets his acceptance letter from Oxford in January. Arthur is actually the one who gets it as he’s shovelling snow from the path in front the house and the mailman just hands him his own mail along with Eames’. He delivers Arthur’s letters to Eames’ now. Arthur doesn’t know how word of these kinds of things get around, and he’d rather it remain a mystery.
“You tell that boy congratulations; he deserves it. He’s too big for a town like this, don’t know why his parents moved here in the first place, really,” Mr Gregory says, smiling.
Arthur flips through the mail and finds the letter to which Mr Gregory must be referring. “How do you know it’s good news?” he asks.
“Feel the weight of that thing. Rejections are always light as a feather. You get to know these things when you’ve been a mailman as long as me.”
“Well, thanks Mr Gregory,” he says, feeling the press of the Christ Church seal in the top corner of the envelope beneath his fingertips.
Mr Gregory isn’t wrong. Half an hour later, Arthur watches Eames’ callused fingers around his pocket knife, slipping between the glue and paper neatly. Eames is chewing on his lower lip so fiercely Arthur takes pity on it and reaches up to brush his fingers across Eames’ mouth until he stops, still thrilled by the fact that he’s allowed.
Eames’ parents come in, bursting with barely contained anxiousness. Arthur folds his hands into his shirt so he doesn’t try to take the letter from Eames, prolonging this moment of not knowing, in which Eames can be two maybes at once; staying here with Arthur and going away to the university he most wants.
Eames opens it.
“I got in,” he says, sounding shocked.
Arthur isn’t too happy about the jumble of confusing emotional states fighting for dominance in his stomach. On one hand, he’s so genuinely happy for Eames, for the way the letter shakes with excitement in his hands as he reads Pleased to offer you…. On the other hand, he has this sick sense of jealousy in the pit of his stomach, which he hates, but can’t ignore. That tiny part of him is a little angry that Eames has an out. Eames has always had an out where Arthur never did. The closest Arthur has to escape is Eames.
The worst feeling is the sense of looming loss. In terms of their relationship, he knows he and Eames could make it through something like this. If Arthur were the type, he’d believe that he and Eames were made just for each other. Except, England is very far away, and three years is a very long time. It’s not as if Eames is going to come back and live here again after university; Eames wouldn’t promise it, and Arthur wouldn’t ask him to. Maybe long distance could work for three years, but it couldn’t work forever. Arthur doesn’t want Eames far away.
Eames’ parents enfold him in massive hugs, and Eames’ dad declares they’re all going out for dinner to celebrate. They go into the other room to make reservations, and Arthur is left standing with Eames alone again. He doesn’t know what to say to make Eames understand that Arthur wants him to go and wants him to stay and that he’s happy and miserable at the same time.
“You don’t have to pretend to be happy,” Eames says, after a moment. Arthur hates himself a little more, because now that Eames isn’t tightly schooling his expression, Arthur realises that he’s forcing joy for the sake of his parents. Arthur’s clearly not doing a very good job of being supportive. “Maybe I won’t even go. I’ll get an acceptance from the University of Chicago; you know I will.”
“Don’t be stupid, Eames. I’m going to hate that you aren’t here, absolutely. But, I’ll love that you’re there since it’s where you want to be. Look at me and tell me I’m lying when I say I am so fucking proud.”
Eames moves towards him and presses his forehead against Arthur’s. It doesn’t feel like they’re teenagers anymore. Eames feels vivid and close and sharp and like he could hurt Arthur, like he already has hurt him even as much as he’s loved him.
Eames’ breath is soft with Arthur’s, and the long, dark sweep of his eyelashes flutter, tangling with Arthur’s as he blinks. Nothing about them is young, right now. It makes Arthur a little scared to realise that he is suddenly part of the real world, that as much as he’s felt like he was twice as much an adult as most people he’s met, as much as he knows about difficult things, it’s really happening now.
“Maybe I don’t want to leave you. Maybe I’ll stay because I want to stay, not because you need me to,” Eames whispers.
“No, Eames; it’s okay,” Arthur murmurs. “It’s okay for you to leave me because you don’t want to.”
“But, Arthur….” Eames starts.
“Going away doesn’t mean you’re losing me. I swear I won’t lose you without a fight,” Arthur interrupts.
Eames smiles, wryly. “You don’t do anything without a fight.”
“Excuse me, but I’ll have you know I’m the composed and sensible one out of the two of us.” Arthur says, turning his chin up.
“At least that’s what you’ve fooled everyone into thinking,” Eames offers. Arthur shrugs a concession.
Eames’ mother comes back into the room, and Arthur steps back to put a reasonable distance between them. Their relationship is probably the worst kept secret in the world, but it’s still technically a secret.
Arthur decides not to tag along on their family dinner. He’ been trying to give Eames’ parent’s some space so they won’t seem him as to much of a burden, living with them.
He climbs up the stairs to Eames’ bedroom and goes to sleep earlier than normal. Eames gets back from dinner, but he doesn’t come upstairs for until around two in the morning. He trips over the camp bed that Arthur has been supposedly sleeping on for the last few months. Arthur blinks sleepily, waking at the sound. His lips are blue with cold and he fits his freezing hands under Arthur’s shirt to warm them up. Arthur nearly shrieks.
“Eames,” he whispers instead, shivering. “Fuck, that’s cold. What have you been doing?”
“Making snow angels,” Eames whispers back. He sheds his wet boots on the floor.
“You are a nutcase.” Arthur sighs and crawls back under the covers, rolling to the edge to make room for Eames.
They have close, quiet sex, silence broken only by the sound of harsh breathing, always trying to press together as much bare skin as possible. They both clutch at each other a little too tightly and Eames’ fingers leave desperate bruises on Arthur’s hips that he stares at in the mirror for a long time the next morning, thinking More things than these will fade.
---
Arthur’s last year of high school can be described as grey. Arthur feels endlessly grateful to Eames’ parents for letting him live with them even after Eames is gone. They’re brilliant of course, but he hates feeling indebted to them.
Time passes, and he takes his SATs and gets predictably good marks. He feels like he spends most of the year asleep. Eames comes home for Christmas and Arthur wakes up for a little while; and he leaves and Arthur goes straight back to bed.
In the spring, Arthur applies to West Point. Eames comes home for Easter, and they have three weeks of laying in the grass in the backyard, hands palm to palm like some kind of mid-American Romeo and Juliet, and Arthur suspends the outside world in favour of the one that blooms up between them when they’re together.
Then Arthur tells Eames he’s been accepted to West Point.
They fight.
“It’s the fucking U. S. military, Arthur. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Eames says, voice flat and quiet. “What are you trying to prove?”
“I’m not trying to prove anything,” Arthur says back, emotionlessly. They’re in Eames’ kitchen; it’s the middle of the day and his parent’s are still at work. Eames was watching Arthur folding laundry, but now they’re just standing in the on opposite sides of the table, shoulders squared like they’re about to face off.
They don’t fight like other people fight, because Arthur doesn’t yell; he hates yelling more than anything. Eames doesn’t yell because yelling at Arthur is almost unforgivable - it makes Eames sick to think of yelling at Arthur. It would be too close to the way Arthur’s father is.
“Really, Arthur. Are you sure? This has nothing to do with your father? I’m here to tell you you’re fucking fooling yourself if you think that the way he is will ever change.”
“You really think that I’m that stupid? This has nothing to do with him. You think everything that you don’t love about me is a product of a shitty upbringing and you act as if I should be forgiven for it. I’m sorry to tell you, Eames, but some of my ideas are actually just mine.”
“I know you have different ideas. That’s fine. But this isn’t just some idea - it’s your life. Can’t you see that this is some stupid act of desperation? You don’t have to become canon fodder to get out of this town.”
“West Point graduates aren’t canon fodder, Eames. I’m doing something real with myself, here. I was so good about Oxford. I wish you’d…I wish…”
Eames cuts over Arthur before he can finish his sentence and his voice is starting to gain a little volume. “You don’t get to bring Oxford into this. That ship has sailed. It’s cruel to hold that over my head.”
“I’m not holding it over your head, I’m just saying you could be proud of me.” He hates that he sounds like a whiny, underappreciated child.
“You aren’t made for the military, Arthur. You just aren’t.” Eames says it like its some kind of obvious fact that Arthur is too stupid to see and it makes him even angrier.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean. You’re wrong-and you are wrong sometimes, I hope you know. I’m being practical. I want to get out of this town and I don’t want to come back.”
“So get a fucking scholarship to some brilliant uni, Arthur,” Eames growls. “I’d pay for you to go where ever you wanted if you don’t get one. You know that, anyway.”
“Damn it!” Arthur looks wounded. “I can’t…you know I can’t accept something like that. I’ve lived out of your pocket since I was eleven, I’m not that kid now. I certainly don’t want to be.”
“You’d get a scholarship.”
“I don’t want a scholarship. I don’t need or want your money or anyone elses’ I don’t want to go to another college, I don’t want to just get out. I want to go to the place I fucking applied, which is West Point.”
“I want you to not be the extension of a bureaucratic authoritarian killing machine. Is that so wrong? I don’t want you doing it because of your stupid dad and his stupid war hero past.”
Arthur’s mouth twists sourly. “Fuck you, Eames. It’s not my dad, I don’t care about my fucking dad. It’s because of my mother, okay? My mother was in the military, too, and she died for her country, and if it was good enough for her, it’s fucking well good enough for me. I’d be good in the military. I can be strong and sharp like she was.”
That shuts Eames up for a minute. Arthur’s never said a word about his mother before. He’s still vibrating with anger, all pent up and nothing to do with it.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” he says, finally harsh and nearly whispering. “That’s a different world that I don’t want to live in. You’re going to be farther away from me than just an ocean and part of a continent and I don’t think I’ll be able to follow you there.”
The cage of hot, seething anger in Arthur’s chest breaks apart and he slumps against the wall. Eames isn’t right about the military being the wrong place for Arthur. There is something quick and precise and deadly in Arthur - a part of him he doesn’t understand - which needs to get out and be used, and there isn’t any other good place for it. But Eames might be right about this.
“Try, Eames,” Arthur says. “Please just try to stay with me. I’m going to West Point because I want to, but I’m only fucking happy when I know you’re still mine.”
---
(PART III)
(PART I)