[Fic] Shake the Gray p2

[nicepantsu]

The rent was due and they didn’t have the money.

Eames could see Arthur was panicking. He’d probably never missed a payment before in his life and the mere thought was freaking him out. Eames was calm-they still had some time to scrape some money up before they would be evicted, after all.

“Eames. For fuck’s sake, you need to do something,” Arthur hissed. “You need to paint something or get a fucking job or... I don’t know, fuck somebody because we need some goddamn money. I have a fucking job, why the hell don’t you?” He still sounded cool as ever, but there was definitely venom behind his words. It made Eames shiver.

“Jesus, Arthur,” Eames scoffed, “I haven’t had a real job since I was fourteen. I’m rubbish at the whole nine-to-five thing. I would never go,” he said. “And besides, do you honestly think I’d be able to fuck someone else? I’d never be able to get it up,” he snorted, lips quirking up the tiniest bit.

“Then let someone fuck you,” Arthur sighed, rolling his eyes. “Eames, I’m serious. I have no more money and isn’t like that store job pays very well. You need to leave this apartment once in awhile, or do something productive like paint something so we can pay the rent.”

“I’m sorry,” Eames said, raking a hand through his hair.

Arthur grit his teeth and folded his arms around his chest. He was itching for it, Eames could tell by the way his hands were clenching around his biceps and the way his eyes were darting around the room. Eames couldn’t say he wasn’t craving a hit either, but their stash was dry and they didn’t have any more money left over.

“You want-”

“Eames, don’t,” Arthur hissed, voice wavering.

“I was just wondering-”

“Yes, okay?” Arthur snapped. “Yes, I fucking want it but it’s either... either this,” he ground out, pulling up the sleeve of Eames’s shirt and tracing his fingers over the growing track marks, “or this apartment.”

He looked conflicted, desperation flashing over those normally so very controlled eyes. His fingers wrapped around Eames’s hand, perhaps just to keep from shaking.

“And I would still prefer somewhere to live,” he hissed, sitting back down and curling his arms around his knees. He rested his forehead against his knees and let out a shaky breath. “At least for awhile.”

Eames swallowed thickly against his dry throat and nodded. He wrung his hands together and glanced back at the stack of blank canvases and tubes of paint and brushes. Maybe if he could just find something to draw from, he could paint something to sell. Someone would buy it.

He propped a large one up against the wall, took a tube of black paint and smeared it over his palm. He felt Arthur’s eyes bore into the back of his neck as he spread it over the canvas.

Eames was sweating. The room was too hot, too big, the air was too thick and he felt like he was drowning. It was too much and he could hardly take it. He couldn’t move-his limbs were frozen in place and his vision was swimming and he felt like he might throw up if he stood up.

Arthur was shivering violently beside him, wrapped up in blankets.

“I can’t do this,” Arthur said, voice shaking and weak, “I can’t do, this, Eames. It’s... it’s too fucking much, I can’t-I can’t-”

Eames groaned and rolled over, to the edge of the bed, away from Arthur. He covered his ears, tried to block out the noise and tried not to listen because fuck he felt like he was dying and like he couldn’t do it, either. But they had no money. They had no stash and Arthur wasn’t getting paid until the end of the week.

“I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t.”

Eames curled into himself. He wanted to scream at Arthur to shut the fuck up but couldn’t find his voice. The walls were pressing down on him, slowly. They were going to crush him-break him slowly until he was a smear on the floor. Or he was going to suffocate on the air-there wasn’t enough oxygen in it, fuck, that’s what the world was doing to the goddamn air, diluting it so there was no fucking oxygen-

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t-”

“Arthur, darling,” Eames growled, “would you please be quiet?”

But it was like Arthur couldn’t hear him, like he was trapped in a daze. He kept mumbling and Eames wanted to strangle him. He needed the quiet, needed the blissful silence. But Arthur was mumbling like a crazy person and wouldn’t shut the fuck up and kept going.

Eames found the strength to get up and lock himself in the bathroom. He sat down between the toilet and the bathtub and wrapped his arms around his knees.

He could still hear Arthur’s faint whispers through the walls, like ghosts murmuring in the drywall.

When the end of the week came around, Eames couldn’t remember being happier to see his dealer. He bought quickly and could have nearly run home, if he wasn’t feeling so sick still. He walked quickly, though, walking quickly through the door and holding the baggie up to show Arthur.

Arthur snatched it and prepared nearly half the baggie’s contents just for himself.

“Jesus, Arthur, slow the fuck down and save some for me!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Arthur snapped, rubber tube between his teeth as he wrapped it around his bicep. “Shut the fuck up, Eames, you did fuck all to earn this, you useless waste.”

Eames narrowed his eyes. “That’s a bit harsh now, don’t you think?”

“No,” Arthur said, pressing the needle into his arm and swearing. He was digging around, trying to find a vein. Eames winced at the sight. “Your paintings are shit and nobody’s going to want them-fuck,” he hissed, withdrawing the needle and trying again. “They-they’re nothing like what you did. They look like you made them so you could fucking sell them. There’s nothing behind them. They’re shit.” He sighed in relief when he finally hit a vein. “I do all the work. You sit on your ass and watch TV or sleep while I work at that fucking store.”

Arthur’s gaze went out of focus momentarily as he injected. The tension seemed to melt away from his muscles instantaneously.

“I was an architect, Eames,” he said, “and now where am I? I’m shooting up with an artist who can’t paint and working at a convenience store.”

He didn’t sound angry anymore, but maybe that was the junk talking. He sounded mostly... regretful. Melancholy. Eames couldn’t look at him because he was right. Arthur had it all together before. He was successful and brilliant and beautiful and now he looked like he was wasting away into a shadow of what he had been. Eames may not have forced him into this life, but he didn’t prevent it, either. He didn’t push him, but he didn’t stop him. Eames started this. He felt a stab of remorse deep down to his core.

He sat down beside Arthur and stared at his lap. “I’m so sorry.”

Arthur’s face crumpled and his shoulders fell forwards as he buried his face into his hands. Eames couldn’t bring himself to touch him.

Arthur disappeared for a few days.

Eames had no idea where he went-didn’t know if he had family or other friends that he could see. He didn’t ask when Arthur came back. He was bothered by it, though. Arthur had never just up and left and not said where he was going before.

It was Arthur who said something, hours after he arrived back, hands shaking around a cigarette. “Don’t you want to know where I was?”

Eames glanced up from the television momentarily to shrug. “It’s none of my business.”

“What if I had never come back?”

“I...” Eames paused, trying to form a coherent thought. “I don’t know.”

“You would have hardly noticed until someone came to kick you out of this place because you never pay rent,” Arthur snorted. “What if I told you I was out fucking someone else?”

Eames looked up and he felt his stomach drop. “I... Arthur.”

“You never want to anymore.”

“Because you work nights and sleep all day,” Eames snapped. “Of course I want, but you’re never in the mood. You’re too busy being pissed at me to ever want to.”

“And you’re too busy being a lazy prick to even care.”

“Were you out fucking someone?”

“Maybe.”

Eames’s heart might have broken a little. He was angry, sure, but mostly he was hurt. He turned away and pressed his lips into a thin line. He could feel his throat constricting and found himself up unable to speak or move or anything. He wanted to erase the previous conversation from his mind-he wanted to think about Arthur as being his, being with him, not parading around some seedy bar, handing himself out to someone else. It felt so fucking wrong.

“Here,” Arthur mumbled, tossing a wad of bills on the floor beside Eames. “I got three hundred bucks out of it. Guy wouldn’t let me leave the fucking bed.”

He stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door. Eames didn’t touch the money.

It quickly turned into a routine that Eames despised-Arthur would disappear and come back stinking of someone else’s cologne or perfume, wad of bills in his pocket. Sometimes he would be gone for a night, sometimes for week and Eames would be up thinking of all the things these people were doing to Arthur-touching him and fucking him and would he moan the same way he moaned when Eames touched him? Would his back arch in the same delicious curve? Would he mumble those same quiet, breathy “please”s?

Eames wanted to tear his hair out every time he thought about it. He hated it. He hated because he loved Arthur and Arthur had said he loved him, too. It was wrong, everything was wrong. It was wrong because he was shooting up alone again just to make himself stop thinking about Arthur’s ‘clients’. It was wrong because Arthur was an architect, for fuck’s sake, not a whore. It was wrong because people in love weren’t supposed to go out and fuck other people for cash, even if they needed it.

Everything was so wrong and fucked up and it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Arthur came back one night, had been gone a few hours, still stinking of sex and stale sweat.

Eames wanted to cry or throw up or hit him.

“Arthur,” he said, standing up. Arthur kept walking, making his way to the bathroom. “Arthur.”

“What?”

Eames wrapped his arms around Arthur’s waist, buried his face into this back of his neck. He tried not to notice the bruise there, the bruise that he didn’t leave. “Please....”

He felt Arthur slump backwards. He felt Arthur cave in at the middle and press backwards, felt him shaking and trying to hide it.

“Please stop,” Eames whispered. “Please, Arthur, please, I love you, please...” he murmured. “We don’t need the extra money, I’ll do something, I promise, just-”

“Eames,” Arthur said, voice cracking in the middle. “We need the money. The store laid me off.”

Eames felt like he was going to cry. “When?”

“About a month ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I...” Arthur paused and placed a hand over Eames’s connected ones across his stomach. “I was figuring something else out.”

“Arthur....”

“It’ll just be for a little while,” Arthur said softly, stepping away. “Until I find something else. It’s not going to be a permanent thing, of course, so...” he sighed. “Can we just-” he looked over into the bathroom. “I want to have a bath.”

Eames swallowed and nodded. They shot up in the warm bathtub and Eames washed Arthur’s hair, ran his hands over his body, whispered “I love you” against his skin more times than he could count. He pretended not to feel Arthur’s shoulders shaking the entire time.

Everything was all fucked up and Eames knew it.

Things were supposed to be easy and fun and it was supposed to be good, but it wasn’t anymore. They were sliding downhill faster than they could claw back up. They were falling and falling and Eames didn’t know how to make it stop anymore.

Arthur was selling his ass. Eames was left sitting back at their apartment, rocking back and forth most nights with thoughts racing through his head, wondering how long it would be before Arthur came back and if he was playing safe and if he was rotting in a ditch somewhere because his smart mouth got his head smashed in by some psychopath and-

He tried not to think about stuff like that.

He knew Arthur was smart enough to not get hurt. He knew Arthur would be careful, but it didn’t stop the thoughts and images of Arthur laying dead somewhere from popping up in Eames’s mind.

Not everything was bad, though. There were still good moments and he revelled in those, tried to cling to them and make them last. Those were the moments when they were both riding out the last waves of their high, bodies pressed together under blankets and they would just lay there and feel each other. They would kiss languidly, like they had all the time in the world. They would fall asleep wrapped around each other and feeling so fucking good.

Then Eames would wake up late in the evening to find Arthur getting dressed and his heart would sink.

“Don’t leave,” he said one night, watching as Arthur’s hands paused over his belt buckle. “Just tonight, love. One night won’t hurt.”

“One night’s still worth a lot of money,” Arthur said, pressing his lips together. It was a victory to Eames to just have him contemplate staying, and he obviously was from the conflicted look flashing across his face.

“We could go out to dinner.”

“With what money?” Arthur snapped.

“I’ll cook then,” Eames snapped back, sitting up. “There’s chicken in the freezer and I’m sure there’s vegetables in the fridge somewhere-”

“Eames, stop.”

Eames shut up and stared at Arthur, throat tight. He just wanted one night. One night.

“I can’t,” Arthur said softly, reaching out and gripping Eames’s hand. “I-I’ll be back in the morning. We can order Chinese for breakfast.” He tried for a smile but it was tight and controlled.

Eames let out a sigh, but nodded. There was no point in arguing once Arthur had made up his mind.

“Go back to sleep,” Arthur said, and walked out after that, leaving Eames to sit in the dark, alone.

The problem was that Arthur didn’t come back in the morning.

He disappeared for two nights and Eames was ready to claw his skin off and was freaking the fuck out. Arthur always came through on his word, was always on time, never forgot a promise. Eames spent two nights pacing through the entire apartment, barely taking the time to shoot up-which only seemed to calm him down for an hour or two. He wished suddenly that they had the money to pay their cellphone bills. He wished that he had a real job so Arthur wouldn’t have to go out every night and could stay home so Eames wouldn’t have to freak out every time he was gone for a night or two.

He wished a lot of things, but that wouldn’t change the fact that Arthur could be lying face down in a puddle somewhere, unconscious and possibly dying.

He was holding his head on the couch, coming down off of a sub-standard high when Arthur walked through the door. His head immediately shot up and he felt a wave of relief wash over him. It was short-lived, though, because all he could feel after was how fucking pissed he was.

“Where the bloody fuck were you?” he snapped.

Arthur winced and raked a hand through his hair-grown out and curling around his ears and looking greasy. There were bags under his eyes and-was that blood on his chin?

Eames frowned and stood up. Arthur immediately looked away and busied himself with taking off his coat. “Sorry. Things got a little complicated,” he said quickly. “Took a little longer than I expected, so-”

When his head turned back, Eames cringed. He had a black eye, for one-not terrible, but definitely bruising. His lip was split and bleeding and-fuck-there were finger-shaped bruises, dark and painful, around his neck. Eames felt his hands shaking.

“Yeah,” Arthur mumbled, “got a little rough. It happens.”

“It happens?” Eames scoffed. “Are you serious? Arthur, it looks like the guy tried to strangle you.”

“Different people get off on different things,” Arthur sighed. Eames noticed that his arms were wrapped around himself defensively and he wouldn’t meet Eames’s eye. That was a first. He looked so small, standing there, staring at the ground and Eames fought the urge hold him and never let go.

Instead, he wrapped his arms around Arthur and pressed his face into his shoulder.

“Eames-” he started to protest, but didn’t finish. Maybe decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe he was just exhausted. Eames didn’t care, just held him there and kissed under his jaw.

“Stay home,” he murmured.

Arthur’s arms wound around Eames’s middle, hands fisting into his shirt. He nodded quickly, his entire weight falling against Eames. “Okay.”

Eames decided he would try to cook the next night. He wanted Arthur to stay in bed, rest up. He even caught Arthur cracking open a copy of The Three Musketeers and skimming over the pages. It was like seeing something from another life, but it was good and Eames felt himself feeling something like relief-like a pressure had been released from his chest and he could finally breathe again.

So he wanted to cook something, maybe to celebrate, maybe to show Arthur that he could, in fact, do something right.

He dug through the freezer and found a few frost bitten chicken breasts. He thawed them in hot water and tried to find something that would go as sauce and found half a bottle of old teriyaki sauce. He decided that it would do and tossed the half-solid chicken breasts into a pan with the teriyaki sauce and put it in the oven.

He waited half an hour, which seemed reasonable, and took the chicken out.

He frowned when he saw the charred outer shell of chicken skin. He felt his heart sink when he cut in and the chicken was still fucking raw on the inside.

He sat down on the kitchen floor and pressed his hands into his eyes. He had wanted to do something nice for them. He had wanted some sense of normality, but he fucked that up too. He couldn’t even cook chicken. He felt like such a fuck up-he couldn’t paint anymore. The flat was scattered with half-finished, shitty paintings that nobody would want to buy ever. He couldn’t work a normal job-junkies usually didn’t have much luck in the job market. He couldn’t even cook. He felt so useless and used up and like such a fucking burden

If Arthur hadn’t have met him, he would be a successful architect, designing buildings for the city. Maybe he would be happily married, litter of kids on the way with some beautiful girl on his arm. Maybe they would move to the suburbs and live in a house with a white picket fence and live happily ever after and have the perfect fucking life, but no.

Eames had to have met him.

It was the first time that Eames felt like it was his fault. It was the first time that he felt like Arthur would be better off without him.

But Eames loved him so fucking much. He knew that he should leave. He knew that if he left, maybe Arthur would go find help and get his life back together. Maybe Arthur would design buildings again, get clean, make money....

But Eames was selfish. He knew he couldn’t leave Arthur, even if he tried to.

Three in the morning and Eames had no fucking clue what day it was.

Arthur was out. The sun was down and the streets were loud and it was like everybody was screaming outside and around him and right in his fucking ear. It was like the world was burning and everyone wanted a piece of it, but Eames couldn’t move. He was in bed, staring the ceiling, watching how the air shifted in the dark. He was going to be consumed in the flames, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

There was a spot on his arm, one of the injection sites, that was started to swell and itch and ooze pus, but he didn’t fucking care anymore. Maybe it would get gangrenous. Maybe it would have to be amputated. He didn’t care. He just didn’t care.

All he wanted was for everything to be good again, but it was impossible. Everything was too fucked up. They were too fucked up. Everything was a mess and there was no way of cleaning it up anymore.

He sat up and wandered over to his abandoned paints. He stared at them and it was like they were staring back, mocking him. He picked them up one bucket and a brush and stared at a canvas. Nothing. There was nothing. He didn’t know what he wanted to paint. He didn’t know if he could and the feeling was so foreign. He had always known where to start with a painting, even if he didn’t know what it was going to be. He could always start and then that start would lead him to the finish. Like he was discovering the painting.

But nothing came to him.

He picked up a brush and soaked it in paint. He pressed it against the wall and walked, leaving a dripping, thick line of black on its surface. He walked all over the apartment, in a daze, painting and leaving thick jolts of paint. He focused on the bedroom. He used his thickest brush to slice at the wall, across its surface. He wanted to coat the room in black. He wanted the very walls to feel what he was feeling-nothing. He wanted to see the room as a void. He wanted the blackness and darkness to be all-encompassing, all over the room. He painted and painted and didn’t notice the sun coming up until it was shining in his eyes.

He tried to paint over the windows, block out the sun. He wanted darkness. He wanted nothingness. That was all he wanted anymore.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Arthur’s voice cut through his daze like a knife. He dropped the paint and the brush at his feet, let the paint soak between his toes.

“I hate this,” he whispered. “I hate this. I hate this, I hate this.”

“Hate what?” Arthur sounded desperate. He walked over and took a hold of Eames’s shoulders, shook him.

“Everything,” Eames snapped, jerking away. “This apartment, what we are, what we’re doing, life and light and everything,” he groaned, tugging at his hair and pulling some out, hands shaking violently. “I hate this, Arthur, I fucking hate it.”

“Eames, calm the fuck down.” Arthur’s voice was on the verge of panicky, but Eames just didn’t care anymore.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Eames whined, hands still in his hair and shaking his head. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t handle it. Everything was so fucked up and he just couldn’t handle it.

“Eames,” Arthur said, grabbing a hold of his hand. “Calm down, okay? Just... sit down and think and breathe.”

Eames tried to pull his hand away with half-hearted strength. He couldn’t bother. He did as he was told-he sat down and breathed.

“My arm,” he croaked when Arthur sat next to him. “My arm. It... it fucking hurts.”

Arthur swallowed audibly and held Eames’s hand. He looked down and saw the puffy, red injection site. “Jesus, Eames,” he whispered. “It’s... I think it’s infected.”

Eames rocked back and forth, not saying anything. Couldn’t say anything. He stared straight ahead, hand limp in Arthur’s.

“We need to go to the hospital.”

Eames shook his head. “I don’t want them to cut my arm off.”

“They’re not going to cut your arm off. We need antibiotics.”

“Don’t...” Eames trailed off before nodding. He kept rocking, not moving, staring at the walls, still wet with black paint. He felt better as he looked at them. It was like he was staring into a starless, moonless night. It was like being surrounded by nothingness.

It was good.

They took the subway to the closest hospital. Arthur held Eames’s hand the entire way, and Eames just stared straight ahead of himself.

The doctors and nurses looked at them with a mixture of pity and revulsion. Arthur looked away, ashamed. Not that Eames blamed him, really-he was a respectable person once. He still retained a kind of dignity. No one else could see it, though, not through the track marks and sunken in eyes and translucent skin, but Eames could. Arthur still held his back straight in the same way he did before everything fell to shit. He still had that sharp look his eyes, beneath the junk-thick glossiness. He was still elegant in that way that Eames couldn’t describe.

But no one could see that anymore. All they saw when they saw Arthur was the addict.

And Eames wanted to curl up and die because that was his fault.

They made them sign some papers. Eames could barely hold a pen. Then they made them wait in the crowded ER waiting room, filled with people looking paler than they did-people in wheelchairs, elderly men with trembling hands, young women rocking back and forth with greasy hair. They sat in silence. Arthur wouldn’t let go of Eames’s hand.

The prescribed him some antibiotics that would get rid of the infection on his arm-said they were smart not to leave it. He gave them that same kind of look that everyone else did: what are you doing to yourselves?

They paid and they left; took the subway home.

They laid in bed in heavy silence, limbs wrapped together as the quiet crushed the air from their lungs.

Eames woke up the next morning and untangled himself from Arthur. He stared at the walls, at the streaks of black, at his own fit of madness staring back at him and cringed. He looked at the floor instead. He popped an antibiotic and picked up a needle.

For the first time in a long time, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to get high. He just needed to. His body needed the numbness. His mind needed the silence. But he didn’t want it.

He injected anyways, into his leg. He almost missed the vein his hands were shaking so badly. He felt something akin to shame as he sunk down against the floor and curled his arms around his knees. Even high, he couldn’t have a moment of peace anymore. There was always something-always something; sadness or anger or shame or what the fuck ever. It was always something.

He rested his head against his knees and rocked. His back thumped against the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to push the shame away. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

Arthur stayed home and reminded Eames to take his pills.

They hardly spoke. Eames usually stayed curled into himself, staring away blankly. He liked to watch his canvases-he liked to see their blankness, their facades speaking to him-no longer mocking him, just... there. They were trying to convince him to move, maybe. But it wasn’t that simple. He only moved to shoot up. Arthur occasionally came with food that he wouldn’t touch.

He wanted it all to end.

He said that at one point and watched Arthur’s face crumple before he turned away. Eames couldn’t feel bad about it. He did want it to end. He wanted everything to just be over. He didn’t want to feel anymore. He couldn’t handle it if the rest of his life was reduced to this.

“When I met you,” Eames said, breaking the omnipresent silence, voice hoarse from lack of use, “you were... everything.”

“Eames.”

“Arthur,” he whispered, cracking his eyes open. “You were beautiful, and successful, and sharp, and proud.”

“Stop-”

“I’ve turned you into a shadow,” he breathed. “How is it that beauty’s the only thing I haven’t managed to ruin?”

Eames reached out and brushed his fingers over Arthur’s sharp cheekbone. Arthur closed his eyes. Eames could hear his breathing become shallow. He flattened his palm over Arthur’s cheek and pushed the grown-out hair behind one of his ears. He swallowed and pulled his hand back, curling back into himself.

“I’m not sorry I met you.”

Arthur pressed a kiss to Eames’s forehead and wrapped his arms around him.

“And I’m not sorry I’m here now.”

Spring air hovered over them. The sun filtered through the sheets hung up over the windows, bathed their skin in golden sunlight. It felt warm. It felt like something out of a life lived years ago. Eames felt his skin prickle under the warmth. He opened his eyes and looked to see blue sky peeking through the cracks in the sheets.

He sat up and tore the sheet down. He heard Arthur inhale sharply as the light hit his still-closed eyes. He squinted against the light and flattened his palms over the glass of the window. He cracked it open and inhaled the cool spring air.

“Arthur.”

Eames didn’t look back, but he knew Arthur was listening.

“We need to stop.”

He did look back from the window at that, saw Arthur sit up and stare at his hands folded in his lap; saw his Adam’s apple bob with a thick swallow; saw the shaky inhale that made his ribcage tremble.

“Yeah,” Arthur whispered, head bobbing in a nod.

“We need to-”

“I know,” Arthur murmured, looking up and staring at Eames, eyes sharp. “We have to... we can’t keep doing this.”

Eames sat down and closed his eyes; felt the sun beat against one side of his face. He reached out and placed hand over Arthur’s, fingers curling loosely together. “How are we going to-”

“I don’t know.”

Eames nodded slowly and leaned against Arthur, hand tightening around his. He felt his heart beat heavily in his chest. He felt his stomach twisting nervously.

But it was okay.

“Alright,” he breathed out.

He looked down at the healing wound on his arm and knew it was the only option they had. He looked at the set line of Arthur’s mouth and knew, somehow, they would be okay. Because even if they couldn’t overcome it, even if they ended up in the same place six months later, dying and stick-thin and holding each other as they wasted away, it would still be okay.

Because they had each other and, underneath everything, that was all that mattered.