Fic: Today I Found My Friends; They're In My Head (Arthur/Eames)
Title: Today I Found My Friends; They're In My Head
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: G
Summary: 'Arthur suddenly dies. Eames visits his grave every day to talk to him. Sometimes he just talks about his day. Sometimes he talks about memories they shared. Sometimes he breaks down and cries.' - Prompt at inception_kink.
Warning: Character death. Angst littered around this fic like confetti.
A/N: Title from Nirvana's 'Lithium'.
It’s a cold November night, and Eames has forgotten his jacket again. The chill in the air is seeping into his bones and making him shudder like a puppet on a string. All around him it is quiet. In this district, nobody stays up after eleven.
It’s an obscure little town, overrun with weeds and the sound of people saying nothing at all. The silence is loudest in the graveyard. Eames used to come here every day. Now he visits two, three times a day, even at night, sometimes. In the dark it’s difficult to make out your own hand in front of your face and there is always the possibility that somebody will sneak up behind you with a baseball bat. But again, this town is quiet and Eames is strong.
He heads to the stone in the corner. It’s marked only with the barest of details; Arthur’s full name. His lifespan. No picture, no epigraph. Arthur lived and died a discreet man.
Eames kneels down on the dewy grass and rests his forehead on the tip of the stone.
‘I had an ice cream today,’ he announces.
Arthur doesn’t reply.
‘I’ve always chosen chocolate, ever since I was a kid. Today I wanted to try something different.’ Eames pauses again. When nothing shatters the silence, he ploughs on. ‘I had mint. Banana. Even spinach…yes, they make those now.’ He laughs; the sound mingles with the wind blowing softly past him. ‘Jesus, how do people eat this kind of stuff?
Don’t be intolerant, Eames, he can almost hear Arthur say. ‘Hey, you weren’t always the soul of courtesy yourself.’ A memory of Arthur telling him his spelling was worse than a cow’s flashes through Eames’ mind and makes him laugh out loud. ‘Cows can’t spell, you bugger,’ he mutters.
My point exactly, the stone seems to whisper.
***************
The night Eames learned Arthur was dying he had been trying to get up the nerve to ask him out. After all the ribbing and the teasing and the sniggering (which Arthur had always borne with resignation) Eames wasn’t quite sure as to how to convey that he did, in fact, like him. How did you tell someone like Arthur that? Arthur with his lovely, serious smile, as if he couldn’t quite bear to show too much of himself. The graceful slope of his shoulders, the doe brown eyes.
Quiet, and yet always intensely alive, thinking, planning, acting. Inconceivable to think that such a life could slip away, could allow itself to slip away.
Eames was croaking out something about a movie that had gotten good reviews, and Arthur, who was busy cleaning papers off his desk, had interrupted him. ‘Eames, I have leukemia.’ His voice was perfectly calm, as usual; he didn’t look up.
Please let this be a joke, Eames thought. ‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s chronic. I have therapy once a week. I don’t date.’
Arthur never joked. Eames' mouth opened, closed, and opened again.
Arthur looked up at him and his eyes softened. ‘You idiot,’ he said. ‘Were you going to confess your love for me? Something like that?’
Eames finally found his voice. ‘Something like that.’ His lips are dry.
Arthur smiled and Eames flinched because it’s the first time Arthur has ever given him a smile and he wished it wasn’t a sad one.
‘Well,’ Arthur says dryly, ‘I could go to the movies with you. If you don’t mind dating a man who’s going to go bald.’
‘Shut up,’ Eames said instinctively. ‘Come here.’
Arthur did, and that was the last miracle that came Eames’ way for a very long time.
********************
Eames was the one who broke down at the clinics, the chemotherapy sessions, the hospitals.
‘Can you try not to embarrass me?’ Arthur would say wryly. ‘You’re worse than a girl.’
(Arthur never cried himself, he said it was undignified.)
When the end came, Eames was in the hospital cafeteria, getting Arthur a Coke. He was punching the vending machine to extract it when the nurse came down and told him. The whiteness of the tiles on the floor, the starched smock of the nurse; funny, the things one remembered.
Everything’s a blur after that. There was running…a thud thud of shoes up the stairs and the bursting open of a door and hoarse guttural sobs and it was only later that Eames realized that it was him, all him.
A body. That’s all it came down to, in the end. Arthur’s sweet lifeless face, all color drained out of it, and his arms splayed out at an unnatural angle. Folded and packed into a hole in the ground; Eames never before appreciated quite how inhuman that was. Burying someone you loved, heaping the entirety of the earth on them. What if Arthur couldn’t bear the weight?
Eames knows he’s not been quite himself since it happened. He thinks strange thoughts and does strange things. But peace washes over him when he sinks down next to the small stone, and these days that’s all he asks for.
Just him, and Arthur, and the rustling of the trees.
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: G
Summary: 'Arthur suddenly dies. Eames visits his grave every day to talk to him. Sometimes he just talks about his day. Sometimes he talks about memories they shared. Sometimes he breaks down and cries.' - Prompt at inception_kink.
Warning: Character death. Angst littered around this fic like confetti.
A/N: Title from Nirvana's 'Lithium'.
It’s a cold November night, and Eames has forgotten his jacket again. The chill in the air is seeping into his bones and making him shudder like a puppet on a string. All around him it is quiet. In this district, nobody stays up after eleven.
It’s an obscure little town, overrun with weeds and the sound of people saying nothing at all. The silence is loudest in the graveyard. Eames used to come here every day. Now he visits two, three times a day, even at night, sometimes. In the dark it’s difficult to make out your own hand in front of your face and there is always the possibility that somebody will sneak up behind you with a baseball bat. But again, this town is quiet and Eames is strong.
He heads to the stone in the corner. It’s marked only with the barest of details; Arthur’s full name. His lifespan. No picture, no epigraph. Arthur lived and died a discreet man.
Eames kneels down on the dewy grass and rests his forehead on the tip of the stone.
‘I had an ice cream today,’ he announces.
Arthur doesn’t reply.
‘I’ve always chosen chocolate, ever since I was a kid. Today I wanted to try something different.’ Eames pauses again. When nothing shatters the silence, he ploughs on. ‘I had mint. Banana. Even spinach…yes, they make those now.’ He laughs; the sound mingles with the wind blowing softly past him. ‘Jesus, how do people eat this kind of stuff?
Don’t be intolerant, Eames, he can almost hear Arthur say. ‘Hey, you weren’t always the soul of courtesy yourself.’ A memory of Arthur telling him his spelling was worse than a cow’s flashes through Eames’ mind and makes him laugh out loud. ‘Cows can’t spell, you bugger,’ he mutters.
My point exactly, the stone seems to whisper.
***************
The night Eames learned Arthur was dying he had been trying to get up the nerve to ask him out. After all the ribbing and the teasing and the sniggering (which Arthur had always borne with resignation) Eames wasn’t quite sure as to how to convey that he did, in fact, like him. How did you tell someone like Arthur that? Arthur with his lovely, serious smile, as if he couldn’t quite bear to show too much of himself. The graceful slope of his shoulders, the doe brown eyes.
Quiet, and yet always intensely alive, thinking, planning, acting. Inconceivable to think that such a life could slip away, could allow itself to slip away.
Eames was croaking out something about a movie that had gotten good reviews, and Arthur, who was busy cleaning papers off his desk, had interrupted him. ‘Eames, I have leukemia.’ His voice was perfectly calm, as usual; he didn’t look up.
Please let this be a joke, Eames thought. ‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s chronic. I have therapy once a week. I don’t date.’
Arthur never joked. Eames' mouth opened, closed, and opened again.
Arthur looked up at him and his eyes softened. ‘You idiot,’ he said. ‘Were you going to confess your love for me? Something like that?’
Eames finally found his voice. ‘Something like that.’ His lips are dry.
Arthur smiled and Eames flinched because it’s the first time Arthur has ever given him a smile and he wished it wasn’t a sad one.
‘Well,’ Arthur says dryly, ‘I could go to the movies with you. If you don’t mind dating a man who’s going to go bald.’
‘Shut up,’ Eames said instinctively. ‘Come here.’
Arthur did, and that was the last miracle that came Eames’ way for a very long time.
********************
Eames was the one who broke down at the clinics, the chemotherapy sessions, the hospitals.
‘Can you try not to embarrass me?’ Arthur would say wryly. ‘You’re worse than a girl.’
(Arthur never cried himself, he said it was undignified.)
When the end came, Eames was in the hospital cafeteria, getting Arthur a Coke. He was punching the vending machine to extract it when the nurse came down and told him. The whiteness of the tiles on the floor, the starched smock of the nurse; funny, the things one remembered.
Everything’s a blur after that. There was running…a thud thud of shoes up the stairs and the bursting open of a door and hoarse guttural sobs and it was only later that Eames realized that it was him, all him.
A body. That’s all it came down to, in the end. Arthur’s sweet lifeless face, all color drained out of it, and his arms splayed out at an unnatural angle. Folded and packed into a hole in the ground; Eames never before appreciated quite how inhuman that was. Burying someone you loved, heaping the entirety of the earth on them. What if Arthur couldn’t bear the weight?
Eames knows he’s not been quite himself since it happened. He thinks strange thoughts and does strange things. But peace washes over him when he sinks down next to the small stone, and these days that’s all he asks for.
Just him, and Arthur, and the rustling of the trees.