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Warmer Places
Inception: Arthur/Eames
5000 words
PG-13
SEQUEL TO THE BOARDING SCHOOL AU. This probably makes more sense if you read that one first. Now with even more overblown angst and pining. That's just how I like it, y'all. I guess a good summary would be 'Arthur was a teenager, once. Probably'.
“I don’t know why I did that,” Arthur breathes. It’s a vague statement.
“Not something either of us should be worrying about right now,” Eames assures him. “Also, I’m glad you did it, you lunatic.”
He shifts against Arthur again; Arthur arches up involuntarily, rubbing the back of his head against the soft grass of the football field.
***
Arthur would never admit it out loud, but sometimes he wishes his life were a movie. Everything would wrap up nicely, there would be a neat conclusion and fade-to-black instead of a scene that continues and continues like everyday life does. Also, movie characters always seem to make the right decisions.
Right now, the facts are that Arthur made several stupid decisions in a row that resulted in a monumentally stupid decision. The stupidest part, perhaps, is that although it scares the shit out of him, he doesn’t really regret it.
He maneuvers his way up the stairs, palm slapping dully against the banister over and over. When he gets to his room, he finds Ariadne clicking around on his laptop. She turns when he bangs his shoulder against the door by accident.
“Arthur!” she exclaims, shutting the laptop. “Where were you? I thought we were supposed to meet at the dance. Cobb was looking for you almost the entire time.”
“The dance,” he repeats. He finally notices that she’s dressed up more than usual, with a black skirt and a sleeveless top. “You look nice,” he offers belatedly.
“Thanks,” she says with a wrinkled nose. “You’re covered in dirt.”
“Yeah,” is all Arthur says. He toes off his shoes and lies down on the bed without even bothering to close the door. She hops up from the chair to sit on the edge of the mattress instead.
“Seriously, are you sick?”
“Hypothetically,” Arthur begins. Ariadne raises an eyebrow. “What would you say if I were to tell you -- ”
At that moment, Cobb swoops into view and leans against the doorframe, too casual. He has one those shit-eating smiles on his face. Arthur looks up at the ceiling and thinks about how much the timing and events of tonight seem to resemble a sitcom, a skewed manifestation of his life-as-a-movie wish.
“I was walking Mal back and she just told me the most interesting thing,” Cobb says. “You and Eames, behind the Lawrence building?”
Ariadne’s expression shifts. She suddenly grabs Arthur by two fistfuls of his shirt and drags him toward her to sniff at his neck.
“Uh,” Arthur manages to get out, and then she’s pushing him away again with a well-aimed shove to the shoulders.
“You’re totally baked right now!” she accuses, equal amounts gleeful and incredulous. She slides off the bed to stand beside Cobb. “Oh my god, did Eames drug you?”
“It was pot in a cigarette, it wasn’t GHB in a drink,” Arthur says irritably. “He didn’t drug me, I made a mistake.” He looks at Cobb and tries to act like his heart isn’t pounding really loudly. “What did Mal say?”
“Uh. That you were taking hits off a roach like a pro,” Cobb explains. “I guess she saw you guys. Ariadne just blew the surprise.”
Ariadne points to her nose. “Couldn’t help it.”
“That’s it?” Arthur prods.
Cobb’s smile slips a bit. “I thought that’d be enough to freak you out, but yeah, that’s it. Why? What else happened?”
“Nothing,” Arthur says.
He changes his mind. “I may have made out with Eames a little bit.”
Silence.
“What,” Ariadne trails off.
“When does making out a little bit cross over to making out a lot?” Cobb asks vaguely.
Arthur buries his face into his pillow.
***
Semester break is hell.
Arthur goes home with one duffel bag filled solely with laundry. He spends an entire day by the washing machine, just staring off into space and thinking about everything. He wonders what would’ve happened if they had just went to the dance. If he hadn’t went looking for Eames. If he’d let Eames stamp out that cigarette.
Everything else is pretty much on the backburner, though it shouldn’t be. He’s thankful that Dom and Ariadne both have their own thing going on at the moment. As far as academics go, Arthur isn’t so lucky: classes always kick his ass all year long no matter what. In actuality, he’s not that great of a student. He tends to get hung up on tangents or passing details and generally focuses on the wrong part of assignments. At least he’s aware he does this, though. At least he knows what he should be doing versus what he is doing.
This thing with Eames is the exact opposite -- Arthur doesn’t know anything at all.
*
Going back to school is the last thing he wants to do, but he’s starting to figure out that life is going to be filled with doing things that he’d rather not do. He’s putting his clean clothes away when Ariadne texts him about watching a movie in the lounge of her dorm.
You and me and that classy gentleman gregory peck, she sends.
Sure, he says, and stares at his messages. Eames had texted him a few times over break. Arthur had only replied the first time.
He closes his phone and puts the rest of his laundry away. Some unfinished homework is leftover, so he tries to get that done before heading over to Ariadne’s dorm around 8pm.
Most of the campus is still quiet, like everyone is making the most of the last free day before classes start again. Curfew isn’t for another couple hours so it’s just him and Ariadne in the lounge, watching Roman Holiday on the lumpy couches. Arthur is hugging a huge bag of white cheddar popcorn that smells like old feet, but it’s Ariadne’s favorite and he doesn’t mind it so much either. She’s using his leg as a pillow, with her arms wrapped around his calf. Occasionally she’ll try to recite Joe’s lines in a deep voice.
About halfway into it, the weight of Ariadne’s head on his leg lifts away. “Do you like him?” she asks suddenly.
When Arthur looks down, he sees her craning her neck, sitting up halfway with her elbow digging into the sofa cushion.
“Gregory Peck?” Arthur asks.
Her mouths twists into a moue as she narrows her eyes. “No, not Gregory Peck.”
Arthur shrugs. The churning in his gut is answer enough. “Does it matter?” he finally asks.
She breathes out a smile and cuffs his shin lightly. “Of course it matters.”
“It’s stupid. We’re just kids anyway,” Arthur deflects. “And we were high. I’m sure he pulls that with tons of people. Maybe I was just stupid to fall for it.”
Ariadne just looks at him. Before she lies back down, she squeezes his knee, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Neither of them had bothered to turn on any of the lamps; light from the television ghosts over her hair in glossy flashes.
For some reason, he starts thinking about last year, when Ariadne had been dating Rob. In the beginning, Arthur had felt a slice of jealousy down his spine whenever she had brought him around. It was stupid, petty, and irrational, a side effect of his curiosity about what it felt like to be dating someone like Rob Fischer, who was good-looking in a way that seemed out of place within their small campus, with their school uniforms and crappy lunches and math books.
Arthur begrudgingly acknowledges that the same could be said for Eames -- he seems out of place as well, but in a way that would put him more at home in the smoke-filled haze of illegal gambling warehouses, or propositioning prostitutes in any red-light district around the world, or stumbling out of a bar, laughing into some woman’s neck.
Then again, Rob’s an asshole, and Eames is --
Ariadne has her head on his leg again. Arthur absently touches her hair; she turns her chin up to give him a brief smile, and they both go back to watching the movie.
*
Arthur has been telling himself that it’s going to be bad. He’s been prepping himself for it. Still, the next morning at breakfast, when a tray rattles onto the table and Eames sits down beside Arthur, he realizes that it is so much worse than he thought.
Eames’s hair has been cut shorter on the sides but it’s still a little long on top. It looks good. Once again, Arthur feels the pull of attraction, cutting clean through all other feelings for a brief moment.
“Hello,” Eames says.
“Hi,” says Arthur. A mash of self-consciousness and anxiety is plaguing both his brain and body. Mostly he feels quietly terrified.
“How was break?” Eames reaches over Arthur’s tray for the ketchup, which he squirts over his food until it’s practically drowning in red.
“Good,” Arthur says cordially. “How was yours?”
“Excellent, thank you.”
Arthur hums. He grips his fork and turns a page in his textbook with his other hand.
Eames points his own fork at Arthur. “Don’t do that,” he warns playfully, but Arthur knows when someone is being serious. This is one of those times.
“Don’t do what? Read my book?”
“Arthur.”
“I’m not doing anything.” Arthur manages a smile. He raises his eyebrows. “Seriously, what?”
Eames studies him, then says, “Don’t be -- predictable. It would break my heart to see you stoop to such levels.” His smile is crooked.
“I’m not,” Arthur repeats. “We’re just sitting here eating breakfast. Eames. Calm down.”
Eames lets it go and gets back to his eggs, but not after one last look, like he doesn’t believe a word. Arthur blinks and turns another page.
*
He manages to spend the rest of the week practically in solitary confinement, only because Eames isn’t exactly eager to see Arthur either. It’s apparent in the empty spot at their regular library table and Cobb’s questions about Eames’s whereabouts. Arthur even passes by the detention room one day -- though all the faces are familiar, none of them are Eames.
Just in case, Arthur starts studying at the older, smaller library at the edge of campus and eats meals either within ten minutes of the dining hall opening or ten minutes before it closes. The only person he talks to is Yusuf, his next door neighbor who plays weird, thumping music at three in the morning. Not so much a problem these days, when Arthur barely sleeps at night and instead finds it easier to nod off in the library, or maybe get a quick nap between classes.
The thought of Eames nags at him, eats away at whatever part of his brain is responsible for worrying about stuff, but still. He thinks this is the better option.
It all crashes down on Friday night, when he’s walking up the path to his dorm. One second he’s fumbling to shove his ID badge into his backpack, the next second he’s looking up and seeing Eames hovering around the double doors, back-lit by the lights from inside the building.
Arthur pulls his mouth into a thin smile. “What are you doing here?” he calls as he walks up, hoping to sound tired, hoping he looks tired, so that his excuses will seem more feasible.
“Can I come up? Or, you know, I don’t even need to do that,” Eames amends. “Have you got some time right now, though?”
Arthur flips his ID back and forth by its clip. “I, um. Actually, I’m really beat. I have some math homework to get done. It’s my hardest class and I want to try to make a cushion for myself, grade-wise.”
“Really,” he adds, though he doesn’t know how much good it’ll do.
“Arthur.” Eames coughs out some laughter, looking around with a smile still on his face. It’s cold enough that each burst of air from his mouth produces a white cloud. “You are the worst.”
“I am, I completely agree,” Arthur says. Distantly, he’s impressed at the fact that they can have two conversations at once without either of them acknowledging it. “I’m sorry. Tomorrow, though.”
“Arthur,” Eames says again. His inflection is strange and for the first time, it occurs to Arthur that Eames might be a little drunk. “Arthur. Okay. I like you. A lot. I hope I’m allowed to say that.”
His words create a flash of optimism. Arthur wants to explore it, ask, Why?, or How much?, or For what?
But it fades in the next moment and Arthur says, “Tomorrow, Eames,” and it sounds awfully firm for a lie.
“Right.” Eames turns away and starts walking off, arms stretched out into a ‘T’. “Right, right. Tomorrow,” he calls into the dark.
Arthur’s vision starts pulsating along with his heartbeat, though it might be a trick of the bright fluorescent lighting when he steps inside the building. He takes the stairs and heads up to his room. The next few hours are spent trying to calm himself down, and he’s studying the ceiling when Yusuf’s music starts up again.
How can one person make him feel like this, he wonders.
*
Eames sends him a text a couple nights later.
I know its hard not to think of me as some flighty bastard. But trust me.
Arthur stares at the screen. There’s an uncomfortable feeling in his chest. He eventually closes his phone and shoves it underneath his pillow, but the feeling remains.
*
One week passes, then another, and it’s like Eames doesn’t even go to the school anymore. The lights in his room are always off. Ariadne says she hasn’t seen him in Chemistry for a while, though he must still be turning in his work somehow. Arthur thinks maybe he sees him rounding a corner at the English building once, but he can’t be sure.
It appears that Arthur has succeeded in avoiding someone so hard they’ve ceased to exist. Theoretically, he should feel relieved. It doesn’t surprise him that he’s not.
Near the end of the month, Ariadne manages to wheedle him into going to the main library. It’s a safe, neutral territory since he knows for a fact that Eames hadn’t stepped foot inside the library until he’d met Arthur, but Arthur is nervous anyway. They sit in their usual spot, books and papers and laptops spread out over the whole table even though only about 10% of their materials are being used.
Arthur chews on his pen. There’s a thick history packet due soon that he’s barely worked on. He manages to answer three questions before putting his pen down. “Hey.”
“Hmm?”
“Has Eames talked to you at all?”
He practically hears Ariadne pause and refocus on the conversation. “No. He stopped hanging out with us after semester break and I don’t have his number. I didn’t want to ask you about it, just in case...”
Ariadne looks back down at her homework instead of finishing. Then she changes her mind and asks, “You don’t want to talk to him?”
“It’s not that,” Arthur says, but he doesn’t know what it is, so he stops.
“It gets easier,” she says without glancing up. “I mean, I know it’s a different situation and all, but it does get easier.”
She sounds earnest, almost pleading. “I know,” Arthur reassures her.
He gazes out the window. There are several groups of people lounging on the lawn, and it takes him a few moments to recognize Cobb and Mal. He watches them, with their easy back-and-forth, and how they make it look so simple.
*
The nights are beginning to get chillier and chillier. It takes a while for Arthur to get warm enough to drift off into an uneasy sleep. He dreams about running, past the glimpses of people and places he knows. Just running.
“Do you know, I really thought you’d come up with something more creative,” Eames says as he pushes Arthur’s window up.
Arthur, in the mean time, is too busy having a heart attack in his bed to respond properly. He watches Eames pull himself into the room with a slight grunt, knocking over papers and a clock off Arthur’s desk in the process. Eames, who is dressed in black pants and a black leather jacket and a black beanie. Eames, who is crawling through Arthur’s window like this is some 1980s coming-of-age movie.
“What the hell,” Arthur manages to croak.
Eames looks at him, pausing in an all-fours position on the desk. “What?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’? You’re in my room. I live on the second story. It’s the middle of the night.”
Eames scoffs. “Freshman year trick,” he dismisses, hopping onto the floor. He pulls off the beanie. His hair hasn’t quite settled into the cut yet, sticking out in tufts like bunches of nutgrass. “It’s obvious your conflict resolution skills aren’t up to par, so I assume I’m going to have to field this one. So, here I am. Let’s talk.”
“What time is it?”
“Four a.m.,” Eames says easily. He taps Arthur’s foot. “Hup hup. Come on.”
Arthur sits up against the wall, facing Eames. He squints. Eames has his arms crossed over his chest and is smiling a bit tightly.
“Alright, fine, I’ll start. You’ve been avoiding me,” Eames says.
“A little bit,” Arthur concedes.
There’s a pause. “Now, this is when you tell me why,” Eames prompts.
Arthur rubs his eyes for a good ten seconds. When he drops his hands back into his lap, Eames is still staring at him. For the first time, it occurs to Arthur that Eames is pretty pissed.
“You’re mad,” Arthur states.
“Of course I’m fucking mad. That’s not the point.” He taps Arthur’s foot again. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“You know what’s going on,” Arthur protests. “I can’t believe you’re making me say it out loud.”
“Fuck you, Arthur, you’re not the only one involved,” Eames says almost conversationally. “You’re incredibly selfish sometimes, do you know that?”
“I’m actually just discovering that as we go, thank you,” Arthur replies in a stiff tone. “It seems you bring it out in me. And that’s part of the whole point, if you want to hear it so badly,” he adds.
Eames stays quiet.
“First of all, we were pretty high. I don’t know if you remember,” Arthur snips. “Considering your general demeanor, I was assuming you were doing similar things with a lot of different people, and that it wouldn’t have happened with me had you been sober.”
“You were wrong. Go on.”
Arthur stumbles a bit at that. “And I don’t know how to do any of this. You make me do -- like, for example, obviously I’ve pissed you off. Usually I don’t care when I piss people off, because I’m aware of it and I really, really don’t care. But this whole thing with us seemed so fragile after,” Arthur gestures vaguely, “after that night. I don’t want to be the one to break it. I didn’t want to be the one to break it. We’re friends. I didn’t want to lose that.”
Arthur realizes he’s barely making sense anymore and that it’s an even weaker argument when he says it out loud, but Eames seems to pick up on the thread.
“So instead of coming to let me know all this, you hole up in your room instead and hope it’ll go away on its own,” Eames says. “Pulling away because you’re scared, Jesus Christ.”
“Are you telling me you’re not?” Arthur hisses. “Do you have any idea how terrifying all this is from my side of things?”
“You can’t possibly think so highly of yourself that you believe you’re some kind of puppetmaster,” Eames continues quickly. “Yes, I do agree that you’re self-aware beyond your years. Fine. Congratulations on being so calculating. But you’re also due to fuck up every once in a while. You can’t just build things up and then abandon them. You can’t have a plan for everything.”
“Well, I’m trying to make it work that way,” Arthur says stubbornly. “I don’t understand what you want from me. You said you like me -- this is me.”
Eames laughs humorlessly. “This isn’t you. This is you insisting on having the emotional IQ of a sadistic child.”
“And this is you insisting you’re a fuck up who sells drugs and is throwing away whatever natural intelligence you have on doing stupid shit,” Arthur shoots back, his temper rising hotly in a way it never did before he met Eames. “Sorry if I want to avoid going down that particular road.”
Eames kicks the bed-frame and then chucks his beanie at Arthur. It hits him soundlessly in the chest. “You’re a fucking idiot, Arthur. And you think I’m one too, so I’m just happy the feeling is mutual now.”
He throws open the door and slams it behind him. The sound is still reverberating around in Arthur’s head when he finally processes what just happened -- that the window is open and the door is closed, that he can barely parse out what they were arguing about, that the room is empty save for himself.
He hops out of bed, just because, then paces around the room, rubbing at his bare arms and chanting, “Shit, shit, shit.”
His body is practically thrumming with a delayed adrenaline rush, but he has no idea what to do with it. In the end, he shoves his feet into some slip-ons and runs out of the room, making his way across the dimly lit campus, skidding over grass that’s wet with pre-dawn dew. By the time he gets to Eames’s room, he’s sweating but clammy, still only in a white tee and sweats.
Arthur starts pounding on the door. Eames opens it almost immediately.
“Listen,” Arthur begins.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Eames cuts in. “I don’t know what the fuck I have to do to reassure you that I want this.”
“I know,” Arthur says right away.
They stand there just looking at each other for a moment that seems to drag on and on.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur tries. He’s breathing hard. “I’ve missed you.”
He tries again. “I miss you.”
Then Eames pulls Arthur inside, kicks the door shut behind him, and grabs Arthur’s face. “I fucking hate you,” he says in between quick, desperate kisses that Arthur returns.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Arthur babbles. “I didn’t -- I’m sorry.”
“I was going to go back there and kick you in the head if you didn’t show up,” Eames grunts as he pats insistently at Arthur’s sides. Arthur raises his arms up and lets Eames strip off the shirt, wincing as the cotton collar pulls up over his face.
“I know,” Arthur mumbles. “I probably would have kicked myself in the head already.”
He kisses Eames again before he can respond. Eames smells a bit like rubbing alcohol -- vodka, Arthur realizes, and then they fall onto the bed before he can think about anything else.
*
Morning dawns in Eames’s room the same way it does in Arthur’s. Sun leaking through the curtains, lighting up the opposite wall and hitting the bed as well. Arthur has been awake for hours, getting used to consciously tamping down on the impulse to retreat and sneak out of the room.
It feels strange, pulling himself back from this familiar precipice over and over. It feels strange that this, him and Eames, isn’t some abstract thing anymore, something he could have chalked off as an accident or a single bad decision. Arthur is very much nearly naked in Eames’s bed. Eames is lying on his stomach, face turned toward away from Arthur. This is happening. He can’t abandon it.
Arthur starts when he feels Eames’s hand pat his own before curling around it.
“This is you, isn’t it? Not some life-like sentient being you’ve left in your place to trick me.”
Arthur snorts. He looks at the back of Eames’s head. “Wouldn’t put that past me, huh?”
“Hell, I wouldn’t put it past myself to do the same.”
“I don’t know,” Arthur muses. “You seemed pretty okay.”
“I’m just better at hiding that sort of thing,” Eames says. Arthur feels him lift his head for a second. “Save for all the empty bottles thrown around the room. Ignore those.”
Arthur hitches out a small laugh. “Also, you were about to punch me.”
“True. In fact, I still hadn’t made up my mind about whether I was going to punch you or kiss you when you came,” Eames says thoughtfully, moving so that he’s facing Arthur. Arthur looks at him and laughs again.
He wonders if Eames has this heady feeling, too -- it clouds Arthur’s mind and makes it hard to think about anything else except for Eames stretched out beside him. Maybe he just needs more sleep.
“So,” Eames says slowly, rolling the word around in his mouth. His eyes are hooded. Arthur can’t stop looking. “I think -- I mean, we’re trying this.”
Arthur hears it as a question, even though it doesn’t sound like one. He nods.
“Even though it’s fucking terrifying for the both of us.”
Arthur clears his throat. “Yeah. Yup.”
“That’s all I needed to know the first time,” Eames says. He puts on an expansive voice and says, “Christ, it’s like you’re some kind of crazy teenager, maximizing drama to the fullest.”
“I know, right? Climbing through people’s windows in the middle of the night and stuff,” Arthur adds.
Eames closes his eyes and smiles. When he squeezes Arthur’s hand, Arthur reciprocates.
*
“I think it’s gonna be okay,” he tells Ariadne.
She’s been circling her corn-on-the-cob as if contemplating where she wants to bite first, but stops at Arthur’s words and squeaks quietly. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Arthur’s first instinct is to try to stop his mouth from curling into a grin, but he lets it go. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Okay, you definitely have to tell me what happened,” she says, grinning back. Over her head, Arthur catches sight of Cobb and Mal walking in to the dining hall, Eames only a few steps behind them.
“Later,” he says, and flags them down.
*
The next morning, they wake up in almost the same position.
“Well, if it’s happened twice in a row, it can’t be a dream,” Eames states.
“Good to know.” Arthur sits up and tries to pat down his hair where he can feel it sticking up. Eames has a morning class; Arthur figures he’ll just gargle some mouthwash and go back to his own room to sleep a bit more.
They stumble out of bed and move slowly, Arthur stepping into his clothes while Eames rifles through his drawers and eventually cobbles together a clean uniform. He drapes a towel around his neck as Arthur opens the door. The whiteboard tacked to the outside comes into view and Arthur spies a faded that’s harassment in the corner, exactly where he'd written it last semester. It seems very long ago now.
“As far as grand romantic declarations go,” Eames says absently, grabbing the magnetic marker and drawing a single tally on the whiteboard with a drag of his hand, “I am one point ahead. Make of that what you will.”
Arthur licks his fingers and erases the words. “I’m sorry I made you run after me like that.”
“Don’t be. You simply gave me a chance to feel very tortured and knightly, like all those great literary characters.” Eames pulls him in and presses his lips to Arthur’s cheek. Early morning, and Eames has just kissed him. “Just promise not to undersell yourself anymore.”
“I don’t.”
“But you do.”
“You do, too,” Arthur counters.
Eames smiles. “Ah, but in a different way. Not the focus of this particular conversation, unfortunately.”
They walk down the hall, bumping elbows with every second step. Arthur has a fleeting, absurd thought of jumping into the shower with Eames.
“I’m trying,” Arthur says, speaking more generally now. Eames cottons on. He always does, it seems like.
“So am I,” he says.
***
Eames is lying on his back, the book face down over his face. Both of them are wearing sweaters and there’s hardly any sun in the first place, let alone where they’re camped out underneath the bleachers, but he’s acting like he’s vacationing in a hot Dubai summer.
“What time is dinner,” he mumbles from behind the book.
“I told Ariadne we’d pick her up around 5:30,” Arthur answers. He’s lying beside Eames but on his stomach, actually reading Franny and Zooey instead of using it as a sun shield. “I think I scare her roommate or something,” he adds offhandedly.
“You scare a lot of people,” Eames snorts.
“That’s not true.”
“Alright, you intimidate them. Same thing.”
“What’s so intimidating? I converse. I make jokes.”
“What it is, is that you do make jokes but with a completely straight face. It throws people off. Sometimes you have to sell yourself a bit more to function in normal society.” Eames peels the book off his face and rolls over abruptly, closing any distance there was between the two of them. He shakes his book and says, “Do it for the Fat Lady.”
“That’s easy for you to say because you’re charming in a plebeian way. Maybe I just consider myself to be more highly evolved,” Arthur says in an even voice.
Eames lets out a belly laugh. “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Marvelous.”
Arthur turns away, but Eames catches his chin and forces Arthur to keep facing him. “There’s a boy,” Eames says fondly when he sees the smile blooming over Arthur’s face.
He kisses him once, twice; Arthur tries to form his mouth to catch them properly, but he can’t quite stop smiling in time.
Inception: Arthur/Eames
5000 words
PG-13
SEQUEL TO THE BOARDING SCHOOL AU. This probably makes more sense if you read that one first. Now with even more overblown angst and pining. That's just how I like it, y'all. I guess a good summary would be 'Arthur was a teenager, once. Probably'.
“I don’t know why I did that,” Arthur breathes. It’s a vague statement.
“Not something either of us should be worrying about right now,” Eames assures him. “Also, I’m glad you did it, you lunatic.”
He shifts against Arthur again; Arthur arches up involuntarily, rubbing the back of his head against the soft grass of the football field.
***
Arthur would never admit it out loud, but sometimes he wishes his life were a movie. Everything would wrap up nicely, there would be a neat conclusion and fade-to-black instead of a scene that continues and continues like everyday life does. Also, movie characters always seem to make the right decisions.
Right now, the facts are that Arthur made several stupid decisions in a row that resulted in a monumentally stupid decision. The stupidest part, perhaps, is that although it scares the shit out of him, he doesn’t really regret it.
He maneuvers his way up the stairs, palm slapping dully against the banister over and over. When he gets to his room, he finds Ariadne clicking around on his laptop. She turns when he bangs his shoulder against the door by accident.
“Arthur!” she exclaims, shutting the laptop. “Where were you? I thought we were supposed to meet at the dance. Cobb was looking for you almost the entire time.”
“The dance,” he repeats. He finally notices that she’s dressed up more than usual, with a black skirt and a sleeveless top. “You look nice,” he offers belatedly.
“Thanks,” she says with a wrinkled nose. “You’re covered in dirt.”
“Yeah,” is all Arthur says. He toes off his shoes and lies down on the bed without even bothering to close the door. She hops up from the chair to sit on the edge of the mattress instead.
“Seriously, are you sick?”
“Hypothetically,” Arthur begins. Ariadne raises an eyebrow. “What would you say if I were to tell you -- ”
At that moment, Cobb swoops into view and leans against the doorframe, too casual. He has one those shit-eating smiles on his face. Arthur looks up at the ceiling and thinks about how much the timing and events of tonight seem to resemble a sitcom, a skewed manifestation of his life-as-a-movie wish.
“I was walking Mal back and she just told me the most interesting thing,” Cobb says. “You and Eames, behind the Lawrence building?”
Ariadne’s expression shifts. She suddenly grabs Arthur by two fistfuls of his shirt and drags him toward her to sniff at his neck.
“Uh,” Arthur manages to get out, and then she’s pushing him away again with a well-aimed shove to the shoulders.
“You’re totally baked right now!” she accuses, equal amounts gleeful and incredulous. She slides off the bed to stand beside Cobb. “Oh my god, did Eames drug you?”
“It was pot in a cigarette, it wasn’t GHB in a drink,” Arthur says irritably. “He didn’t drug me, I made a mistake.” He looks at Cobb and tries to act like his heart isn’t pounding really loudly. “What did Mal say?”
“Uh. That you were taking hits off a roach like a pro,” Cobb explains. “I guess she saw you guys. Ariadne just blew the surprise.”
Ariadne points to her nose. “Couldn’t help it.”
“That’s it?” Arthur prods.
Cobb’s smile slips a bit. “I thought that’d be enough to freak you out, but yeah, that’s it. Why? What else happened?”
“Nothing,” Arthur says.
He changes his mind. “I may have made out with Eames a little bit.”
Silence.
“What,” Ariadne trails off.
“When does making out a little bit cross over to making out a lot?” Cobb asks vaguely.
Arthur buries his face into his pillow.
***
Semester break is hell.
Arthur goes home with one duffel bag filled solely with laundry. He spends an entire day by the washing machine, just staring off into space and thinking about everything. He wonders what would’ve happened if they had just went to the dance. If he hadn’t went looking for Eames. If he’d let Eames stamp out that cigarette.
Everything else is pretty much on the backburner, though it shouldn’t be. He’s thankful that Dom and Ariadne both have their own thing going on at the moment. As far as academics go, Arthur isn’t so lucky: classes always kick his ass all year long no matter what. In actuality, he’s not that great of a student. He tends to get hung up on tangents or passing details and generally focuses on the wrong part of assignments. At least he’s aware he does this, though. At least he knows what he should be doing versus what he is doing.
This thing with Eames is the exact opposite -- Arthur doesn’t know anything at all.
*
Going back to school is the last thing he wants to do, but he’s starting to figure out that life is going to be filled with doing things that he’d rather not do. He’s putting his clean clothes away when Ariadne texts him about watching a movie in the lounge of her dorm.
You and me and that classy gentleman gregory peck, she sends.
Sure, he says, and stares at his messages. Eames had texted him a few times over break. Arthur had only replied the first time.
He closes his phone and puts the rest of his laundry away. Some unfinished homework is leftover, so he tries to get that done before heading over to Ariadne’s dorm around 8pm.
Most of the campus is still quiet, like everyone is making the most of the last free day before classes start again. Curfew isn’t for another couple hours so it’s just him and Ariadne in the lounge, watching Roman Holiday on the lumpy couches. Arthur is hugging a huge bag of white cheddar popcorn that smells like old feet, but it’s Ariadne’s favorite and he doesn’t mind it so much either. She’s using his leg as a pillow, with her arms wrapped around his calf. Occasionally she’ll try to recite Joe’s lines in a deep voice.
About halfway into it, the weight of Ariadne’s head on his leg lifts away. “Do you like him?” she asks suddenly.
When Arthur looks down, he sees her craning her neck, sitting up halfway with her elbow digging into the sofa cushion.
“Gregory Peck?” Arthur asks.
Her mouths twists into a moue as she narrows her eyes. “No, not Gregory Peck.”
Arthur shrugs. The churning in his gut is answer enough. “Does it matter?” he finally asks.
She breathes out a smile and cuffs his shin lightly. “Of course it matters.”
“It’s stupid. We’re just kids anyway,” Arthur deflects. “And we were high. I’m sure he pulls that with tons of people. Maybe I was just stupid to fall for it.”
Ariadne just looks at him. Before she lies back down, she squeezes his knee, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Neither of them had bothered to turn on any of the lamps; light from the television ghosts over her hair in glossy flashes.
For some reason, he starts thinking about last year, when Ariadne had been dating Rob. In the beginning, Arthur had felt a slice of jealousy down his spine whenever she had brought him around. It was stupid, petty, and irrational, a side effect of his curiosity about what it felt like to be dating someone like Rob Fischer, who was good-looking in a way that seemed out of place within their small campus, with their school uniforms and crappy lunches and math books.
Arthur begrudgingly acknowledges that the same could be said for Eames -- he seems out of place as well, but in a way that would put him more at home in the smoke-filled haze of illegal gambling warehouses, or propositioning prostitutes in any red-light district around the world, or stumbling out of a bar, laughing into some woman’s neck.
Then again, Rob’s an asshole, and Eames is --
Ariadne has her head on his leg again. Arthur absently touches her hair; she turns her chin up to give him a brief smile, and they both go back to watching the movie.
*
Arthur has been telling himself that it’s going to be bad. He’s been prepping himself for it. Still, the next morning at breakfast, when a tray rattles onto the table and Eames sits down beside Arthur, he realizes that it is so much worse than he thought.
Eames’s hair has been cut shorter on the sides but it’s still a little long on top. It looks good. Once again, Arthur feels the pull of attraction, cutting clean through all other feelings for a brief moment.
“Hello,” Eames says.
“Hi,” says Arthur. A mash of self-consciousness and anxiety is plaguing both his brain and body. Mostly he feels quietly terrified.
“How was break?” Eames reaches over Arthur’s tray for the ketchup, which he squirts over his food until it’s practically drowning in red.
“Good,” Arthur says cordially. “How was yours?”
“Excellent, thank you.”
Arthur hums. He grips his fork and turns a page in his textbook with his other hand.
Eames points his own fork at Arthur. “Don’t do that,” he warns playfully, but Arthur knows when someone is being serious. This is one of those times.
“Don’t do what? Read my book?”
“Arthur.”
“I’m not doing anything.” Arthur manages a smile. He raises his eyebrows. “Seriously, what?”
Eames studies him, then says, “Don’t be -- predictable. It would break my heart to see you stoop to such levels.” His smile is crooked.
“I’m not,” Arthur repeats. “We’re just sitting here eating breakfast. Eames. Calm down.”
Eames lets it go and gets back to his eggs, but not after one last look, like he doesn’t believe a word. Arthur blinks and turns another page.
*
He manages to spend the rest of the week practically in solitary confinement, only because Eames isn’t exactly eager to see Arthur either. It’s apparent in the empty spot at their regular library table and Cobb’s questions about Eames’s whereabouts. Arthur even passes by the detention room one day -- though all the faces are familiar, none of them are Eames.
Just in case, Arthur starts studying at the older, smaller library at the edge of campus and eats meals either within ten minutes of the dining hall opening or ten minutes before it closes. The only person he talks to is Yusuf, his next door neighbor who plays weird, thumping music at three in the morning. Not so much a problem these days, when Arthur barely sleeps at night and instead finds it easier to nod off in the library, or maybe get a quick nap between classes.
The thought of Eames nags at him, eats away at whatever part of his brain is responsible for worrying about stuff, but still. He thinks this is the better option.
It all crashes down on Friday night, when he’s walking up the path to his dorm. One second he’s fumbling to shove his ID badge into his backpack, the next second he’s looking up and seeing Eames hovering around the double doors, back-lit by the lights from inside the building.
Arthur pulls his mouth into a thin smile. “What are you doing here?” he calls as he walks up, hoping to sound tired, hoping he looks tired, so that his excuses will seem more feasible.
“Can I come up? Or, you know, I don’t even need to do that,” Eames amends. “Have you got some time right now, though?”
Arthur flips his ID back and forth by its clip. “I, um. Actually, I’m really beat. I have some math homework to get done. It’s my hardest class and I want to try to make a cushion for myself, grade-wise.”
“Really,” he adds, though he doesn’t know how much good it’ll do.
“Arthur.” Eames coughs out some laughter, looking around with a smile still on his face. It’s cold enough that each burst of air from his mouth produces a white cloud. “You are the worst.”
“I am, I completely agree,” Arthur says. Distantly, he’s impressed at the fact that they can have two conversations at once without either of them acknowledging it. “I’m sorry. Tomorrow, though.”
“Arthur,” Eames says again. His inflection is strange and for the first time, it occurs to Arthur that Eames might be a little drunk. “Arthur. Okay. I like you. A lot. I hope I’m allowed to say that.”
His words create a flash of optimism. Arthur wants to explore it, ask, Why?, or How much?, or For what?
But it fades in the next moment and Arthur says, “Tomorrow, Eames,” and it sounds awfully firm for a lie.
“Right.” Eames turns away and starts walking off, arms stretched out into a ‘T’. “Right, right. Tomorrow,” he calls into the dark.
Arthur’s vision starts pulsating along with his heartbeat, though it might be a trick of the bright fluorescent lighting when he steps inside the building. He takes the stairs and heads up to his room. The next few hours are spent trying to calm himself down, and he’s studying the ceiling when Yusuf’s music starts up again.
How can one person make him feel like this, he wonders.
*
Eames sends him a text a couple nights later.
I know its hard not to think of me as some flighty bastard. But trust me.
Arthur stares at the screen. There’s an uncomfortable feeling in his chest. He eventually closes his phone and shoves it underneath his pillow, but the feeling remains.
*
One week passes, then another, and it’s like Eames doesn’t even go to the school anymore. The lights in his room are always off. Ariadne says she hasn’t seen him in Chemistry for a while, though he must still be turning in his work somehow. Arthur thinks maybe he sees him rounding a corner at the English building once, but he can’t be sure.
It appears that Arthur has succeeded in avoiding someone so hard they’ve ceased to exist. Theoretically, he should feel relieved. It doesn’t surprise him that he’s not.
Near the end of the month, Ariadne manages to wheedle him into going to the main library. It’s a safe, neutral territory since he knows for a fact that Eames hadn’t stepped foot inside the library until he’d met Arthur, but Arthur is nervous anyway. They sit in their usual spot, books and papers and laptops spread out over the whole table even though only about 10% of their materials are being used.
Arthur chews on his pen. There’s a thick history packet due soon that he’s barely worked on. He manages to answer three questions before putting his pen down. “Hey.”
“Hmm?”
“Has Eames talked to you at all?”
He practically hears Ariadne pause and refocus on the conversation. “No. He stopped hanging out with us after semester break and I don’t have his number. I didn’t want to ask you about it, just in case...”
Ariadne looks back down at her homework instead of finishing. Then she changes her mind and asks, “You don’t want to talk to him?”
“It’s not that,” Arthur says, but he doesn’t know what it is, so he stops.
“It gets easier,” she says without glancing up. “I mean, I know it’s a different situation and all, but it does get easier.”
She sounds earnest, almost pleading. “I know,” Arthur reassures her.
He gazes out the window. There are several groups of people lounging on the lawn, and it takes him a few moments to recognize Cobb and Mal. He watches them, with their easy back-and-forth, and how they make it look so simple.
*
The nights are beginning to get chillier and chillier. It takes a while for Arthur to get warm enough to drift off into an uneasy sleep. He dreams about running, past the glimpses of people and places he knows. Just running.
“Do you know, I really thought you’d come up with something more creative,” Eames says as he pushes Arthur’s window up.
Arthur, in the mean time, is too busy having a heart attack in his bed to respond properly. He watches Eames pull himself into the room with a slight grunt, knocking over papers and a clock off Arthur’s desk in the process. Eames, who is dressed in black pants and a black leather jacket and a black beanie. Eames, who is crawling through Arthur’s window like this is some 1980s coming-of-age movie.
“What the hell,” Arthur manages to croak.
Eames looks at him, pausing in an all-fours position on the desk. “What?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’? You’re in my room. I live on the second story. It’s the middle of the night.”
Eames scoffs. “Freshman year trick,” he dismisses, hopping onto the floor. He pulls off the beanie. His hair hasn’t quite settled into the cut yet, sticking out in tufts like bunches of nutgrass. “It’s obvious your conflict resolution skills aren’t up to par, so I assume I’m going to have to field this one. So, here I am. Let’s talk.”
“What time is it?”
“Four a.m.,” Eames says easily. He taps Arthur’s foot. “Hup hup. Come on.”
Arthur sits up against the wall, facing Eames. He squints. Eames has his arms crossed over his chest and is smiling a bit tightly.
“Alright, fine, I’ll start. You’ve been avoiding me,” Eames says.
“A little bit,” Arthur concedes.
There’s a pause. “Now, this is when you tell me why,” Eames prompts.
Arthur rubs his eyes for a good ten seconds. When he drops his hands back into his lap, Eames is still staring at him. For the first time, it occurs to Arthur that Eames is pretty pissed.
“You’re mad,” Arthur states.
“Of course I’m fucking mad. That’s not the point.” He taps Arthur’s foot again. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“You know what’s going on,” Arthur protests. “I can’t believe you’re making me say it out loud.”
“Fuck you, Arthur, you’re not the only one involved,” Eames says almost conversationally. “You’re incredibly selfish sometimes, do you know that?”
“I’m actually just discovering that as we go, thank you,” Arthur replies in a stiff tone. “It seems you bring it out in me. And that’s part of the whole point, if you want to hear it so badly,” he adds.
Eames stays quiet.
“First of all, we were pretty high. I don’t know if you remember,” Arthur snips. “Considering your general demeanor, I was assuming you were doing similar things with a lot of different people, and that it wouldn’t have happened with me had you been sober.”
“You were wrong. Go on.”
Arthur stumbles a bit at that. “And I don’t know how to do any of this. You make me do -- like, for example, obviously I’ve pissed you off. Usually I don’t care when I piss people off, because I’m aware of it and I really, really don’t care. But this whole thing with us seemed so fragile after,” Arthur gestures vaguely, “after that night. I don’t want to be the one to break it. I didn’t want to be the one to break it. We’re friends. I didn’t want to lose that.”
Arthur realizes he’s barely making sense anymore and that it’s an even weaker argument when he says it out loud, but Eames seems to pick up on the thread.
“So instead of coming to let me know all this, you hole up in your room instead and hope it’ll go away on its own,” Eames says. “Pulling away because you’re scared, Jesus Christ.”
“Are you telling me you’re not?” Arthur hisses. “Do you have any idea how terrifying all this is from my side of things?”
“You can’t possibly think so highly of yourself that you believe you’re some kind of puppetmaster,” Eames continues quickly. “Yes, I do agree that you’re self-aware beyond your years. Fine. Congratulations on being so calculating. But you’re also due to fuck up every once in a while. You can’t just build things up and then abandon them. You can’t have a plan for everything.”
“Well, I’m trying to make it work that way,” Arthur says stubbornly. “I don’t understand what you want from me. You said you like me -- this is me.”
Eames laughs humorlessly. “This isn’t you. This is you insisting on having the emotional IQ of a sadistic child.”
“And this is you insisting you’re a fuck up who sells drugs and is throwing away whatever natural intelligence you have on doing stupid shit,” Arthur shoots back, his temper rising hotly in a way it never did before he met Eames. “Sorry if I want to avoid going down that particular road.”
Eames kicks the bed-frame and then chucks his beanie at Arthur. It hits him soundlessly in the chest. “You’re a fucking idiot, Arthur. And you think I’m one too, so I’m just happy the feeling is mutual now.”
He throws open the door and slams it behind him. The sound is still reverberating around in Arthur’s head when he finally processes what just happened -- that the window is open and the door is closed, that he can barely parse out what they were arguing about, that the room is empty save for himself.
He hops out of bed, just because, then paces around the room, rubbing at his bare arms and chanting, “Shit, shit, shit.”
His body is practically thrumming with a delayed adrenaline rush, but he has no idea what to do with it. In the end, he shoves his feet into some slip-ons and runs out of the room, making his way across the dimly lit campus, skidding over grass that’s wet with pre-dawn dew. By the time he gets to Eames’s room, he’s sweating but clammy, still only in a white tee and sweats.
Arthur starts pounding on the door. Eames opens it almost immediately.
“Listen,” Arthur begins.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Eames cuts in. “I don’t know what the fuck I have to do to reassure you that I want this.”
“I know,” Arthur says right away.
They stand there just looking at each other for a moment that seems to drag on and on.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur tries. He’s breathing hard. “I’ve missed you.”
He tries again. “I miss you.”
Then Eames pulls Arthur inside, kicks the door shut behind him, and grabs Arthur’s face. “I fucking hate you,” he says in between quick, desperate kisses that Arthur returns.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Arthur babbles. “I didn’t -- I’m sorry.”
“I was going to go back there and kick you in the head if you didn’t show up,” Eames grunts as he pats insistently at Arthur’s sides. Arthur raises his arms up and lets Eames strip off the shirt, wincing as the cotton collar pulls up over his face.
“I know,” Arthur mumbles. “I probably would have kicked myself in the head already.”
He kisses Eames again before he can respond. Eames smells a bit like rubbing alcohol -- vodka, Arthur realizes, and then they fall onto the bed before he can think about anything else.
*
Morning dawns in Eames’s room the same way it does in Arthur’s. Sun leaking through the curtains, lighting up the opposite wall and hitting the bed as well. Arthur has been awake for hours, getting used to consciously tamping down on the impulse to retreat and sneak out of the room.
It feels strange, pulling himself back from this familiar precipice over and over. It feels strange that this, him and Eames, isn’t some abstract thing anymore, something he could have chalked off as an accident or a single bad decision. Arthur is very much nearly naked in Eames’s bed. Eames is lying on his stomach, face turned toward away from Arthur. This is happening. He can’t abandon it.
Arthur starts when he feels Eames’s hand pat his own before curling around it.
“This is you, isn’t it? Not some life-like sentient being you’ve left in your place to trick me.”
Arthur snorts. He looks at the back of Eames’s head. “Wouldn’t put that past me, huh?”
“Hell, I wouldn’t put it past myself to do the same.”
“I don’t know,” Arthur muses. “You seemed pretty okay.”
“I’m just better at hiding that sort of thing,” Eames says. Arthur feels him lift his head for a second. “Save for all the empty bottles thrown around the room. Ignore those.”
Arthur hitches out a small laugh. “Also, you were about to punch me.”
“True. In fact, I still hadn’t made up my mind about whether I was going to punch you or kiss you when you came,” Eames says thoughtfully, moving so that he’s facing Arthur. Arthur looks at him and laughs again.
He wonders if Eames has this heady feeling, too -- it clouds Arthur’s mind and makes it hard to think about anything else except for Eames stretched out beside him. Maybe he just needs more sleep.
“So,” Eames says slowly, rolling the word around in his mouth. His eyes are hooded. Arthur can’t stop looking. “I think -- I mean, we’re trying this.”
Arthur hears it as a question, even though it doesn’t sound like one. He nods.
“Even though it’s fucking terrifying for the both of us.”
Arthur clears his throat. “Yeah. Yup.”
“That’s all I needed to know the first time,” Eames says. He puts on an expansive voice and says, “Christ, it’s like you’re some kind of crazy teenager, maximizing drama to the fullest.”
“I know, right? Climbing through people’s windows in the middle of the night and stuff,” Arthur adds.
Eames closes his eyes and smiles. When he squeezes Arthur’s hand, Arthur reciprocates.
*
“I think it’s gonna be okay,” he tells Ariadne.
She’s been circling her corn-on-the-cob as if contemplating where she wants to bite first, but stops at Arthur’s words and squeaks quietly. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Arthur’s first instinct is to try to stop his mouth from curling into a grin, but he lets it go. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Okay, you definitely have to tell me what happened,” she says, grinning back. Over her head, Arthur catches sight of Cobb and Mal walking in to the dining hall, Eames only a few steps behind them.
“Later,” he says, and flags them down.
*
The next morning, they wake up in almost the same position.
“Well, if it’s happened twice in a row, it can’t be a dream,” Eames states.
“Good to know.” Arthur sits up and tries to pat down his hair where he can feel it sticking up. Eames has a morning class; Arthur figures he’ll just gargle some mouthwash and go back to his own room to sleep a bit more.
They stumble out of bed and move slowly, Arthur stepping into his clothes while Eames rifles through his drawers and eventually cobbles together a clean uniform. He drapes a towel around his neck as Arthur opens the door. The whiteboard tacked to the outside comes into view and Arthur spies a faded that’s harassment in the corner, exactly where he'd written it last semester. It seems very long ago now.
“As far as grand romantic declarations go,” Eames says absently, grabbing the magnetic marker and drawing a single tally on the whiteboard with a drag of his hand, “I am one point ahead. Make of that what you will.”
Arthur licks his fingers and erases the words. “I’m sorry I made you run after me like that.”
“Don’t be. You simply gave me a chance to feel very tortured and knightly, like all those great literary characters.” Eames pulls him in and presses his lips to Arthur’s cheek. Early morning, and Eames has just kissed him. “Just promise not to undersell yourself anymore.”
“I don’t.”
“But you do.”
“You do, too,” Arthur counters.
Eames smiles. “Ah, but in a different way. Not the focus of this particular conversation, unfortunately.”
They walk down the hall, bumping elbows with every second step. Arthur has a fleeting, absurd thought of jumping into the shower with Eames.
“I’m trying,” Arthur says, speaking more generally now. Eames cottons on. He always does, it seems like.
“So am I,” he says.
***
Eames is lying on his back, the book face down over his face. Both of them are wearing sweaters and there’s hardly any sun in the first place, let alone where they’re camped out underneath the bleachers, but he’s acting like he’s vacationing in a hot Dubai summer.
“What time is dinner,” he mumbles from behind the book.
“I told Ariadne we’d pick her up around 5:30,” Arthur answers. He’s lying beside Eames but on his stomach, actually reading Franny and Zooey instead of using it as a sun shield. “I think I scare her roommate or something,” he adds offhandedly.
“You scare a lot of people,” Eames snorts.
“That’s not true.”
“Alright, you intimidate them. Same thing.”
“What’s so intimidating? I converse. I make jokes.”
“What it is, is that you do make jokes but with a completely straight face. It throws people off. Sometimes you have to sell yourself a bit more to function in normal society.” Eames peels the book off his face and rolls over abruptly, closing any distance there was between the two of them. He shakes his book and says, “Do it for the Fat Lady.”
“That’s easy for you to say because you’re charming in a plebeian way. Maybe I just consider myself to be more highly evolved,” Arthur says in an even voice.
Eames lets out a belly laugh. “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Marvelous.”
Arthur turns away, but Eames catches his chin and forces Arthur to keep facing him. “There’s a boy,” Eames says fondly when he sees the smile blooming over Arthur’s face.
He kisses him once, twice; Arthur tries to form his mouth to catch them properly, but he can’t quite stop smiling in time.