No One Has a Photo of This Man (Part 5/7)
Title: No One Has a Photo of This Man (Leon/The Professional AU) Part 5/7
Word Count: 5000
Rating: R (for violence)
Warnings: graphic violence, graphic descriptions of injuries, (in future parts: major character death, sexual situations involving a minor)
Notes: A Leon/The Professional AU that I started writing for ae_match and am finishing and posting here. Here are the links to all the previous parts:
Part I // Part II // Part III // Part IV
Dudes, this part kinda got away from me in terms of word count. I looked up from my keyboard, and all of a sudden I had 5,000 words. WHAT?! Soooo, there are going to be seven parts instead of six.
Eames sits at the kitchen table and clutches the newspaper hard and for long enough that the ink begins to rub off on his fingers. Under his unwavering gaze, the picture on the front page becomes nothing more than a chaotic mass of colored dots.
Eames knows that there are two police stations in Echo Park: Rampart and Northeast. He picks up the receiver of the beige phone that hangs in the kitchen and dials 411. A few moments later, he’s put through to the Northeast police station.
After several rings, Eames hears the click of someone picking up. A bored voice mumbles, “Good afternoon, Northeast Division police station. Officer Jackson speaking. How can I help you?”
Eames is silent for a moment. He hasn’t really thought through what to say. “Yes, um... Could you put me through to Detective Fischer, please? Detective Robert Fischer?”
“Detective Fischer is at the Rampart Division station. Do you need the number?”
“Oh, uh, no- No, I’ve got it. Thank you.” Eames shoves the receiver back into its cradle and walks quickly away from the phone. One small step closer to this man and already his heart is threatening to punch through his ribcage, equal parts fear and fury roiling his blood.
He walks over to the bedroom that they’ve turned into a storage space for Arthur’s weapons, grasps the nob and gives it an experimental twist. It’s locked.
He marches into the living room and digs his backpack out from underneath the couch, sifts through the items inside of it blindly until his fingers find a small square of thin plastic. His Ralph’s grocery store Rewards Club card.
He returns to the door and slides the card swiftly in between the door and the frame, aiming it so that it catches on the latch and the bolt that runs along side it. He twists the knob hard while he shimmies the card. The bolt springs back into the mechanism, and the door creaks open.
Eames slips into the room quietly. He walks over to the mirrored closet that runs along one side of the room and slides it open, removes one of the smaller cases from the top shelf and places it carefully on the floor.
He flips open the clasps and opens the case to see one of Arthur’s semi-automatic pistols, the dull glint on the black finish making it appear soft and almost delicate. Eames reaches out his hand to lift the gun from its case and pauses. Arthur’s face flashes through his mind’s eye. A warm smile and a ribbon of silver. A gray overcoat and the self-conscious shuffling of feet.
If Eames goes through with this, he loses him. Arthur. The man who’s watched him cry and scream on multiple occasions and promised him, “You’ll be alright, Eames. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day. But sooner than you think.” The man who watches him collapse in a heap of sweat and heaving breath on a daily basis, smiles and says, “Good. Now do it again.” The only person that’s ever asked Eames to do something more than just survive.
Even if Eames were somehow, miraculously able to put a bullet in Fischer’s brain and get out of that police station alive and not in cuffs, he would still lose Arthur.
Eames would lose his trust, or worse, incriminate him.
He closes the case and slips it back onto the top shelf, leaves the bedroom and locks the door behind him. He catches sight of the plastic wall clock in the kitchen. It’s eleven a.m. Arthur’s been gone for four hours. Eames nibbles on his bottom lip as he wonders how long it usually takes Arthur to execute a hit.
~
Arthur is in Glenwood, a small city that sits at the base of the San Gabriel mountains, about an hour north of Los Angeles. He likes it here. There are more trees and the sky is slightly bluer than it is in Los Angeles. He and his dad lived in a neighborhood like this when Arthur first moved to America. In a house owned by Dom’s family.
He walks down a quiet street in a residential neighborhood, the pavement below his feet still wet from a morning shower. He stops when he reaches house number 1789, turns and walks swiftly through the front yard. The house is a two-storey bungalow enclosed by a tall wrought iron fence crawling with bougainvillea. He climbs up and over it.
There are security cameras on the fence, but Arthur doesn’t bother to do anything more than keep his head down. Criminals aren’t going to contact the police. Even if they see him coming, they aren’t going to be able to stop him.
As soon as Arthur’s feet touch the ground on the other side of the fence, a tawny colored pit bull begins to bark and bolt toward him from the other side of the yard. Arthur takes him out with a dart. He doesn’t kill pets, even if they’re trained to kill.
Arthur hurries across the cement pathway in front of him. He presses himself up against the side of the house just as a young man wearing an Eminem t-shirt and holding a Makarov pistol steps out of the sliding glass doors that lead to the back patio. Arthur hears him mutter under his breath, “Если ты выстрелишь мою собаку, я разорваю твою кишку проклатую сквозь заницу, блядь (If you shot my dog, I will tear your stinking guts out through your asshole, motherfucker).” This is the mark.
Arthur needs to know if there are other people in the house before he makes his presence known. He creeps over to the front porch, stands up and shoots out two of the small panels on the front door before crouching back down.
A few seconds later, the barrel of a PSS silent pistol breaks through one of the windows and fires three shots into the grass just in front of Arthur.
Arthur stays down and waits a few seconds, certain that the mark will begin to make his way around the side of the house. Once he hears the squeak of sneakers on wet grass just to his right, he fires a couple shots into the roof just above the marks head.
A couple shingles jump and begin to slide down the roof, the sound distracting the mark for long enough that Arthur can safely jump out and put a bullet in his kneecap. Once he’s down, Arthur puts another one right between his eyes.
Arthur turns to his left just as the person brandishing the silent pistol begins to creep around the other corner of the house. It’s a young woman, barefoot and clad in a blue terrycloth robe. The pistol trembles in her grasp, arms held straight out in front of her.
Arthur charges her just before she rounds the corner. He grabs the hand that holds the pistol and shoves his other hand into her shoulder, dislocating it. She screams and falls face-first onto the lawn, her arm writhing uselessly at her side.
Arthur turns his face away from her and mutters a sincere “Извини (Sorry).” He takes the magazine out of the gun, pushes out the remaining rounds and pockets them. He wipes down every part that he’s touched with a handkerchief before tossing the gun into the opposite side of the yard.
He climbs up the wrought iron fence. He’s about to vault off the top when his foot slips, the metal still slick with dew. His legs fly out from underneath him, and he falls into a jagged spike of rusted metal at the top of the fence. It catches on the skin over his ribs and tears him open as he falls.
He bites his lips shut to keep from screaming when he hits the ground and allows himself a moment to breathe before he stumbles to standing.
He grabs his handkerchief out of his pocket and climbs back up the fence to wipe his blood from the metal spike, teeth clenched together so hard that his ears begin to ring.
He jumps back down, presses his hand to where he’s bleeding and runs, not stopping until he gets to his car, parked two miles away in the parking lot of a Foot Locker. As soon as he’s in the driver’s seat, he rips his shirt off and wraps it tightly around his torso, then pulls his coat on and buttons it, hissing.
He pulls onto the freeway and drives down the fast lane for about two miles before the cars in front of and beside him all come to a dead stop. If this keeps up, it will take Arthur at least two hours to get home.
He presses his hand to his side and lets out a deep breath, leans forward on the steering wheel a bit. He hopes Eames isn’t the worrying type.
~
Eames gives up watching TV after ten minutes when he realizes that it’s not going to keep his mind off of Arthur. He’s been gone for five and a half hours. He didn’t even give Eames a hint as to where he was going. He could be bleeding out somewhere up in the Bay Area for all Eames knows.
Eames walks into the kitchen and grabs a rag and a bottle of 409 from underneath the sink. He’s just removed everything from the counter tops and sprayed them down when he hears the scratch of metal against metal and the lock in the front door snap back. His heart beat resumes its regular rhythm for the first time in six hours.
The door opens and Arthur comes stumbling into the apartment. He closes the door behind him and leans back against it, his hand pressed into his side and his eyes squeezed shut. “Hey, Eames.” He lets out a weak grunt, and the hand pressed into his torso shifts momentarily, revealing a brown stain on the grey wool.
The hairs on the back of Eames’s neck stand up, and his voice trembles when he speaks, “Arthur... what’s going on...”
“It’s okay, Eames. It’s just- ah... It’s just a tear.”
“Arthur, what the fuck happened?!” Eames demands, loud and bordering on hysterical.
Arthur lets out a high-pitched, delirious laugh. “I fell. I fell on a fucking fence post. Of all the things...” His face is white and blue, the color of a fading bruise, and his hair is damp with sweat at his temples. “If you can’t deal with the blood, I understand. I can... I can sew it up myself.”
Eames clutches the rag in his hand, lets out a trembling breath and shakes his head. “You’re fucking daft if you think I’m gonna leave you like this.” He tosses the rag and the 409 on the table and walks over to Arthur, wraps his right arm around his waist and pulls his left arm over his shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s get you to the bed.”
“I can walk just fine, Eames.” Arthur eyelids are heavy, and he blinks as if trying to dispel the pain.
“Shut up, and lean on me,” Eames bites out. Arthur is a heavy, near-dead weight in his arms. They grunt in tandem as Eames pulls Arthur gently to the living room and settles him at the foot of his mattress. “First aid supplies are in the bathroom, yeah?”
Arthur begins to unbutton his coat. “Yeah. Under the sink. White metal box.”
Eames nods and jogs off to the bathroom. When he comes back bearing the first aid kit and an armful of towels, Arthur is lying on his side on the mattress, peeling his light blue button down off of his torso, the shirt stiff and black with blood.
Eames sways on his feet in the doorway. “Christ.”
Arthur looks down at the gash in his side. At first, it seems as though the blood has clotted, and then a small stream of red comes trickling slowly out of the end of the wound, dribbles across Arthur’s torso.
Eames rushes to him, throws a towel over the mattress and shifts Arthur forward onto it. “There you go. It’s only bleeding a little. You’ll be all right.” His voice thin and laced with fear.
He leans on the edge of the bed behind Arthur, shakes out and refolds a bright orange bath towel.
Arthur takes in a deep breath that turns into a moan when Eames presses the towel into his side. He reaches above his head and grabs one of Eames’s pillows, his bloody fingers smearing it with long swatches of red. He presses it to the side of his face and breathes into it.
Eames mutters a nervous litany of It’s okay. It’s not that bad. as he continually refolds the towel and presses it back on to the wound, less and less blood seeping into it each time.
Arthur’s breathing evens out before Eames’s does. After about twenty minutes, he twists his shoulders back and looks up at Eames, asks him, “Did you have a good day today?” A small smile curls his lips. He’s obviously trying to lighten the mood.
A weak laugh tumbles out of Eames’s mouth. “I’ve had better.”
“Did you go for a walk?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I walked about two miles. Just through downtown.”
Arthur nods. “Good. Did you see anything interesting?” Arthur’s lectures on the history of Los Angeles have become an integral part of their walks. Eames’s eye will catch on something, and he’ll comment on it, prompting Arthur to impart all the knowledge he’s gained from fourteen years of living in the city and hundreds of hours spent in the Los Angeles Public Library.
Eames bites his bottom lip and pulls the towel off of Arthur’s torso. He tosses it on the floor and grabs another one from the foot of the mattress. “I did see one thing, actually. It was over on... Third or Second? It looked like a big red gate. And it had... train tracks behind it. But they weren’t flat. They were going up. To the street above.”
Arthur’s smile widens. “That’s Angel’s Flight.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a funicular.”
“That word means nothing to me.”
“It’s like a trolley. Or a shuttle. It was built in the early nineteen hundreds as a way to get commuters from one street to another.”
Eames shakes his head and chuckles. “Fucking Americans. Need to use a trolley to get from one street to the next.”
“Well, the thing about downtown is that it’s built on two levels, so it can actually take a long time to get from street up to the next.” Arthur shifts a bit, props his head up on his blood-stained pillow in order to look at Eames more directly. “And the area that it’s in, Bunker Hill, is right near the old banking district. So there were all these bankers that had to get to where they were going quickly.” He looks down his body to where Eames’s hands are pressed to his ribcage. “How’s it looking?”
Eames peels the towel from Arthur’s skin and examines it. Five minutes on the wound and there’s only a thin strip of blood on it. He turns it to show Arthur. “Looks like it’s stopping.” He peers down at the gash in Arthur’s side in order to get his first good look at it.
It’s about two inches long and lays about eight inches below Arthur’s armpit, close enough to the join of his arm to his body that he won’t be able to sew the skin back together with his own hands.
Eames feels Arthur’s eyes on him. He glances up to see the older man staring at him with a crinkle in between his brows.
Eames swallows. “You’ve given yourself stitches before, yeah?”
“Eames,” Arthur murmurs, “I can do it-”
Eames shakes his head. “Not without doing a shit job, you can’t.” He runs his tongue along his bottom lip. “I can do it. But you’re gonna have to talk me through it.”
“Are you sure?” Arthur asks softly.
Eames looks directly into Arthur’s eyes, nods. “Yeah, I am.” He takes a look at the medical supplies spilled across the mattress. “Do you have any alcohol I can clean it with?”
“Just use warm water and soap. Alcohol’s gonna be too harsh. The hand soap that you bought the other day will work just fine.”
Eames retrieves a bowl from the kitchen, fills it with water and a couple pumps of hand soap.
He gently wipes the great patch of blood that’s spread out from the wound off Arthur’s skin. Clear drops of water swirling with blood fall down Arthur’s pectorals and his shoulder blades and are absorbed by the towel underneath him.
Eames can’t help but admire the stretch of pale skin beneath his hands. Shallow peaks and valleys of muscle and bone. The freckles dusting Arthur’s shoulders. The little knot of skin that pushes out of his belly button. Eames’s eyes are following the trail of dark hair that runs up the middle of Arthur’s chest when he’s suddenly struck by how relatively unmarred his torso is.
He dabs at the skin around the wound and says, “I expected you to have more of these.”
Arthur lets out a small, amused hum. “If I did, that would mean I wasn’t very good at my job.”
“That’s not necessarily true. You weren’t always a master of your craft, yeah? You weren’t born a killer.”
Arthur’s stomach hollows out underneath Eames’s hands as he takes a deep breath, but he doesn’t respond.
Eames looks up to see Arthur staring at him, his lips slightly parted. A soft, reverent look in his eyes, as if Eames has just given him something precious.
Eames looks back down to his task. After a couple moments of silence, he nods toward Arthur’s right arm where it lays limply on the mattress. “Those scars on your arm are pretty nasty. Where’d you get those?”
Arthur looks down at his forearm where three short, jagged lines run parallel to each other. He sounds mildly amused when he explains, “I got those just a couple years ago. German shepherd.”
Eames winces. “Fucking hell.” He looks down at the long white line that runs across the left side of Arthur’s belly. “What about that one on your stomach?”
“I got that during one of my first jobs. NR-40.”
“What’s an NR-40?”
“Military combat knife.” Arthur laughs at the memory. “I nearly pissed my pants when I started bleeding. I thought I was gonna die.”
Eames flips the towel over to a dry side and begins to mop the damp from Arthur’s skin. “There’s one on your back too. Just below your right shoulder blade.”
Arthur begins to pick at the towel that he’s lying on. “I got that when I was fifteen.”
“What happened?”
Arthur is silent for a moment. “Something I’d rather not talk about.”
Eames nods. “Fair enough.” He tosses the towel on the floor behind him and gets up to walk around the mattress and rummage through the various tubes of cream in the First Aid kit. “Have you got Neosporin in here?”
“Yeah. It’s not brand name though. It just says ‘triple antibiotic ointment’ on it. There’s some numbing cream too for when you sew me up. I can’t remember what it says on it. It’s in a blue tube.”
Eames glances up at Arthur for a moment, and when he does, his eye catches on something that makes him pause. There are two small eight-pointed stars inked into Arthur’s chest, tucked into a spot that Eames wasn’t able to see while sitting behind him. They’re tattooed into the skin just below his shoulders and just above his pectorals.
Eames swallows. “There are stars on your chest.”
Arthur pulls his shoulders back and looks down his body, as if he’d forgotten that the tattoos were there. “Yeah. Yeah, I got those a few years ago. Just after my dad died.” He breathes out a small laugh. “That was back when I wanted the whole world to know how tough I was.”
Eames doesn’t move for a moment. He stares at the ink on Arthur’s chest and fiddles with the tube in his hand. The tattoos and their placement strike him as familiar, and the skin on his forearms pebbles when he remembers why. Before he can think the better of it, he says, quietly and almost to himself, “I’ve seen those before. Those tattoos.”
Arthur’s face freezes. “Have you?”
“Yeah... yeah, it was on one of those shows on, like, the Discovery channel. About...” He trails off, looks down at the metal box on the bed. “What color did you say the numbing cream was?”
“Eames... if there’s something you want to ask me about...” Arthur sighs. “Go ahead. I’d rather have everything out in the open.”
Eames nibbles on his lower lip. “The show. It was... it was about the Russian mafia.”
Arthur swallows, looks down and continues picking at the towel. “Is that what you want to know? Whether I’m part of the Russian mafia?”
Eames takes a deep breath and walks back around the bed to sit beside Arthur. He unscrews the cap from the tube, looks up at Arthur. “I was just wondering if that’s where you’re from. Russia.”
Arthur’s features soften. “What makes you think I’m not from here?”
Eames squeezes some cream onto his fingers and rubs it gently into Arthur’s skin. “You talk in your sleep.”
“So?”
“So... you don’t speak English when you do.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“How do you know I’m not just speaking gibberish?” Arthur is just teasing him at this point. “People say things that don’t make any sense in their sleep. Even make up words.”
“Well, your made-up words sound a lot like Russian.”
“How do you know what Russian sounds like?”
“Because I’ve seen Rocky IV at least a dozen times.”
Arthur chuckles and lets his head fall back against the pillow.
Eames reaches across him and drops the antibiotic cream on the mattress. “All right. Moment of truth. Time to stitch you back up.”
Arthur talks him through the process, his voice steady and assured. “Don’t hesitate once you’ve started piercing the skin. Follow through. It’ll only hurt more if you don’t do it quickly.”
Eames lets out a deep, relieved breath once he’s put the hook through both sides of the wound for the first time. He pulls it through with a pair of tweezers and ties the stitch, threads the hook again.
It gets easier after the second stitch. Eames’s fingers stop sweating, and his movements become more confident. It becomes a quiet and intimate act. The slight hitch in Arthur’s breath when the hook pierces him. The exhale as Eames pulls it through. The hand that Eames keeps splayed on Arthur’s side, holding Arthur’s skin where he wants it.
They’re on stitch number five when Arthur says. “It’s Ukrainian.”
Eames doesn’t look up from where he’s tying the thread. “What is?”
“The language that I speak in my sleep. It’s not Russian. It’s Ukrainian.”
Eames looks up at him. “Is that where you’re from?” His voice quiet, careful not to disturb the moment.
“Yeah. I grew up in a small city in the east. Donetsk. Came here when I was fifteen.”
“Fifteen? How is it that you don’t have an accent?”
Arthur grins down at him. “Practice.” His breath catches when Eames pushes the hook into his skin. “In my line of work, it’s best if people think that you’re just another average, harmless American.”
Eames nods. “Makes sense. Did you come here with your family?”
“No. I came by myself. My dad was already here.”
“What about your mum?”
“She still lives in Donetsk. With my brothers and sisters.”
“Do you ever go home and visit them?”
“No.” Arthur frowns. “No, I... I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t? Your employer won’t let you go?”
“No, I mean... There are a lot of people back home that... that wouldn’t be happy to see me.”
Eames nods and doesn’t press for more. He rubs his thumb gently across Arthur’s skin, allows his touch to tell Arthur that he doesn’t have to say anything more if he doesn’t want to.
“Where are you from?” Arthur asks him.
“England.”
“Really? I never would’ve guessed.”
Eames smiles. He suspects Arthur would have given him a soft thwack on the head for being cheeky if the angle weren’t so awkward.
“I was born in east London, but we lived all over. Nottingham, Hull, Leeds, Edinburgh. We even lived in Dublin for a couple years. Mum and dad could never stay in one place for too long. And neither of them could hold down a job for more than a couple months.”
“Did you enjoy it? Living in all those different places?”
“It was fun when I was younger. But as I got older, mum and dad started to...” This is why Eames doesn’t enjoy telling people his life story. He can’t do it without making his mum and dad sound cruel and himself pathetic. “They started to go off on their own for days or weeks at a time. Leave me to take care of my sister.” Eames shrugs, manages a small smile. “It was actually fun most of the time. We got to do whatever we wanted. Sometimes we’d run out of money but...” Eames ties off the seventh stitch in silence, unsure of what else to say.
“How did you end up here?”
“My nan, my dad’s mum, left us some money when she passed. Mum and dad decided to use it to move to L.A.”
“Why L.A.?”
“Why not? That was always mum and dad’s attitude. Why not?”
They’re both silent as Eames finishes tying off the last stitch and sits back to survey his work.
“So where’s your dad now?”
Eames gathers the hook and the tweezers up in a towel and places it on the end of the bed. “I don’t know. He disappeared almost as soon as we got here.” He gets up and walks to the other side of the bed, begins to look through the First Aid kit for bandages and tape.
“Eames?” Arthur’s voice is quiet and tired.
“Yeah?” Eames responds without looking up.
“I’m sorry.”
Eames’s head jerks up at that, and he’s about to give Arthur an earful about not needing his pity when he notices the look on Arthur’s face.
He looks drained, defeated. His head lolling to the side and his mouth moving around silent words that he can’t seem to push past his lips. At last, the words come spilling out. “I’m... I’m sorry that everything is so fucked up right now, and that I can’t- I can’t do anything... I can’t do anything except teach you a bunch of useless garbage, because I don’t know anything,” He gulps down a deep breath, and the skin around his eyes constricts. “And I’m not good at anything except- except fucking killing people-”
“Arthur,” Eames walks swiftly around the bed to sit at his side. Arthur looks up at him, blinking rapidly and breathing heavily. Eames digs his fingers into the mattress, wanting to touch Arthur but not knowing how to when he gets this worked up. “Arthur, don’t ever be sorry on my behalf. All right?” He gives Arthur a small grin. “I pity myself plenty. I don’t need you to pity me as well.”
Arthur lets out a deep breath. “Yeah... yeah, I guess we’ve both got ourselves covered on that front.”
Eames nods, smiles and reaches across Arthur to grab the gauze and the tape off the mattress. “And don’t talk that way about yourself. There are plenty of things you’re good at besides killing people. Like... well... I mean you are shite at cleaning up after yourself. And the only thing you know how to cook is eggs. And you couldn’t be called an apt conversationalist by any stretch of the imagination- ow!”
Arthur’s hand comes up to thump Eames on the side of the head. “Asshole,” he grumbles affectionately.
Eames chuckles and begins to cut up the gauze.
~
Arthur wakes up in pain the next morning, his liver filtering the acetaminophen out of his blood and the pain in his side growing until it has its own heartbeat. He grabs the bottle of Tylenol from where it’s laying beside him on the mattress and pops three into his mouth, picks up the cup of water that Eames left for him off the floor and chugs the whole thing.
He cranes his head back to look out the window. The sky is just beginning to lighten. It’s probably about six a.m.
He looks to his side and allows his gaze to rest on Eames, asleep just across from him on the ugly orange couch. He’s lying on his back, arms stretched above his head, blanket pooled around his hips. His bare chest rises and falls softly, his skin sallow in the orange light from the streetlamps. His full lips are pursed around slow, quiet breaths. He’s beautiful.
Sometimes, just looking at Eames makes Arthur ache. Opens up a wound that’s almost as old as Eames is.
Sometimes, Arthur looks at Eames and sees a ghost. A boy he once knew half a lifetime ago: Oli.
Eames is so much like him. The careful and hopeful way with which he moves through life. Desperate to belong somewhere, but in his very nature, belonging both nowhere and everywhere. The aggressive humor that he uses to fight damn near everything. His effortless grace and instinctual sensuality. The incalculable force of his will.
The way that he makes Arthur feel. As if just being who he is is important to someone. Just having him around makes Arthur sharper, stronger, keeps him on his toes. Arthur had almost forgotten that he can be funny.
Sometimes, Arthur will look at Eames and think, I know you. You’re dead. You died in my arms fourteen years ago.
Word Count: 5000
Rating: R (for violence)
Warnings: graphic violence, graphic descriptions of injuries, (in future parts: major character death, sexual situations involving a minor)
Notes: A Leon/The Professional AU that I started writing for ae_match and am finishing and posting here. Here are the links to all the previous parts:
Part I // Part II // Part III // Part IV
Dudes, this part kinda got away from me in terms of word count. I looked up from my keyboard, and all of a sudden I had 5,000 words. WHAT?! Soooo, there are going to be seven parts instead of six.
Eames sits at the kitchen table and clutches the newspaper hard and for long enough that the ink begins to rub off on his fingers. Under his unwavering gaze, the picture on the front page becomes nothing more than a chaotic mass of colored dots.
Eames knows that there are two police stations in Echo Park: Rampart and Northeast. He picks up the receiver of the beige phone that hangs in the kitchen and dials 411. A few moments later, he’s put through to the Northeast police station.
After several rings, Eames hears the click of someone picking up. A bored voice mumbles, “Good afternoon, Northeast Division police station. Officer Jackson speaking. How can I help you?”
Eames is silent for a moment. He hasn’t really thought through what to say. “Yes, um... Could you put me through to Detective Fischer, please? Detective Robert Fischer?”
“Detective Fischer is at the Rampart Division station. Do you need the number?”
“Oh, uh, no- No, I’ve got it. Thank you.” Eames shoves the receiver back into its cradle and walks quickly away from the phone. One small step closer to this man and already his heart is threatening to punch through his ribcage, equal parts fear and fury roiling his blood.
He walks over to the bedroom that they’ve turned into a storage space for Arthur’s weapons, grasps the nob and gives it an experimental twist. It’s locked.
He marches into the living room and digs his backpack out from underneath the couch, sifts through the items inside of it blindly until his fingers find a small square of thin plastic. His Ralph’s grocery store Rewards Club card.
He returns to the door and slides the card swiftly in between the door and the frame, aiming it so that it catches on the latch and the bolt that runs along side it. He twists the knob hard while he shimmies the card. The bolt springs back into the mechanism, and the door creaks open.
Eames slips into the room quietly. He walks over to the mirrored closet that runs along one side of the room and slides it open, removes one of the smaller cases from the top shelf and places it carefully on the floor.
He flips open the clasps and opens the case to see one of Arthur’s semi-automatic pistols, the dull glint on the black finish making it appear soft and almost delicate. Eames reaches out his hand to lift the gun from its case and pauses. Arthur’s face flashes through his mind’s eye. A warm smile and a ribbon of silver. A gray overcoat and the self-conscious shuffling of feet.
If Eames goes through with this, he loses him. Arthur. The man who’s watched him cry and scream on multiple occasions and promised him, “You’ll be alright, Eames. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day. But sooner than you think.” The man who watches him collapse in a heap of sweat and heaving breath on a daily basis, smiles and says, “Good. Now do it again.” The only person that’s ever asked Eames to do something more than just survive.
Even if Eames were somehow, miraculously able to put a bullet in Fischer’s brain and get out of that police station alive and not in cuffs, he would still lose Arthur.
Eames would lose his trust, or worse, incriminate him.
He closes the case and slips it back onto the top shelf, leaves the bedroom and locks the door behind him. He catches sight of the plastic wall clock in the kitchen. It’s eleven a.m. Arthur’s been gone for four hours. Eames nibbles on his bottom lip as he wonders how long it usually takes Arthur to execute a hit.
~
Arthur is in Glenwood, a small city that sits at the base of the San Gabriel mountains, about an hour north of Los Angeles. He likes it here. There are more trees and the sky is slightly bluer than it is in Los Angeles. He and his dad lived in a neighborhood like this when Arthur first moved to America. In a house owned by Dom’s family.
He walks down a quiet street in a residential neighborhood, the pavement below his feet still wet from a morning shower. He stops when he reaches house number 1789, turns and walks swiftly through the front yard. The house is a two-storey bungalow enclosed by a tall wrought iron fence crawling with bougainvillea. He climbs up and over it.
There are security cameras on the fence, but Arthur doesn’t bother to do anything more than keep his head down. Criminals aren’t going to contact the police. Even if they see him coming, they aren’t going to be able to stop him.
As soon as Arthur’s feet touch the ground on the other side of the fence, a tawny colored pit bull begins to bark and bolt toward him from the other side of the yard. Arthur takes him out with a dart. He doesn’t kill pets, even if they’re trained to kill.
Arthur hurries across the cement pathway in front of him. He presses himself up against the side of the house just as a young man wearing an Eminem t-shirt and holding a Makarov pistol steps out of the sliding glass doors that lead to the back patio. Arthur hears him mutter under his breath, “Если ты выстрелишь мою собаку, я разорваю твою кишку проклатую сквозь заницу, блядь (If you shot my dog, I will tear your stinking guts out through your asshole, motherfucker).” This is the mark.
Arthur needs to know if there are other people in the house before he makes his presence known. He creeps over to the front porch, stands up and shoots out two of the small panels on the front door before crouching back down.
A few seconds later, the barrel of a PSS silent pistol breaks through one of the windows and fires three shots into the grass just in front of Arthur.
Arthur stays down and waits a few seconds, certain that the mark will begin to make his way around the side of the house. Once he hears the squeak of sneakers on wet grass just to his right, he fires a couple shots into the roof just above the marks head.
A couple shingles jump and begin to slide down the roof, the sound distracting the mark for long enough that Arthur can safely jump out and put a bullet in his kneecap. Once he’s down, Arthur puts another one right between his eyes.
Arthur turns to his left just as the person brandishing the silent pistol begins to creep around the other corner of the house. It’s a young woman, barefoot and clad in a blue terrycloth robe. The pistol trembles in her grasp, arms held straight out in front of her.
Arthur charges her just before she rounds the corner. He grabs the hand that holds the pistol and shoves his other hand into her shoulder, dislocating it. She screams and falls face-first onto the lawn, her arm writhing uselessly at her side.
Arthur turns his face away from her and mutters a sincere “Извини (Sorry).” He takes the magazine out of the gun, pushes out the remaining rounds and pockets them. He wipes down every part that he’s touched with a handkerchief before tossing the gun into the opposite side of the yard.
He climbs up the wrought iron fence. He’s about to vault off the top when his foot slips, the metal still slick with dew. His legs fly out from underneath him, and he falls into a jagged spike of rusted metal at the top of the fence. It catches on the skin over his ribs and tears him open as he falls.
He bites his lips shut to keep from screaming when he hits the ground and allows himself a moment to breathe before he stumbles to standing.
He grabs his handkerchief out of his pocket and climbs back up the fence to wipe his blood from the metal spike, teeth clenched together so hard that his ears begin to ring.
He jumps back down, presses his hand to where he’s bleeding and runs, not stopping until he gets to his car, parked two miles away in the parking lot of a Foot Locker. As soon as he’s in the driver’s seat, he rips his shirt off and wraps it tightly around his torso, then pulls his coat on and buttons it, hissing.
He pulls onto the freeway and drives down the fast lane for about two miles before the cars in front of and beside him all come to a dead stop. If this keeps up, it will take Arthur at least two hours to get home.
He presses his hand to his side and lets out a deep breath, leans forward on the steering wheel a bit. He hopes Eames isn’t the worrying type.
~
Eames gives up watching TV after ten minutes when he realizes that it’s not going to keep his mind off of Arthur. He’s been gone for five and a half hours. He didn’t even give Eames a hint as to where he was going. He could be bleeding out somewhere up in the Bay Area for all Eames knows.
Eames walks into the kitchen and grabs a rag and a bottle of 409 from underneath the sink. He’s just removed everything from the counter tops and sprayed them down when he hears the scratch of metal against metal and the lock in the front door snap back. His heart beat resumes its regular rhythm for the first time in six hours.
The door opens and Arthur comes stumbling into the apartment. He closes the door behind him and leans back against it, his hand pressed into his side and his eyes squeezed shut. “Hey, Eames.” He lets out a weak grunt, and the hand pressed into his torso shifts momentarily, revealing a brown stain on the grey wool.
The hairs on the back of Eames’s neck stand up, and his voice trembles when he speaks, “Arthur... what’s going on...”
“It’s okay, Eames. It’s just- ah... It’s just a tear.”
“Arthur, what the fuck happened?!” Eames demands, loud and bordering on hysterical.
Arthur lets out a high-pitched, delirious laugh. “I fell. I fell on a fucking fence post. Of all the things...” His face is white and blue, the color of a fading bruise, and his hair is damp with sweat at his temples. “If you can’t deal with the blood, I understand. I can... I can sew it up myself.”
Eames clutches the rag in his hand, lets out a trembling breath and shakes his head. “You’re fucking daft if you think I’m gonna leave you like this.” He tosses the rag and the 409 on the table and walks over to Arthur, wraps his right arm around his waist and pulls his left arm over his shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s get you to the bed.”
“I can walk just fine, Eames.” Arthur eyelids are heavy, and he blinks as if trying to dispel the pain.
“Shut up, and lean on me,” Eames bites out. Arthur is a heavy, near-dead weight in his arms. They grunt in tandem as Eames pulls Arthur gently to the living room and settles him at the foot of his mattress. “First aid supplies are in the bathroom, yeah?”
Arthur begins to unbutton his coat. “Yeah. Under the sink. White metal box.”
Eames nods and jogs off to the bathroom. When he comes back bearing the first aid kit and an armful of towels, Arthur is lying on his side on the mattress, peeling his light blue button down off of his torso, the shirt stiff and black with blood.
Eames sways on his feet in the doorway. “Christ.”
Arthur looks down at the gash in his side. At first, it seems as though the blood has clotted, and then a small stream of red comes trickling slowly out of the end of the wound, dribbles across Arthur’s torso.
Eames rushes to him, throws a towel over the mattress and shifts Arthur forward onto it. “There you go. It’s only bleeding a little. You’ll be all right.” His voice thin and laced with fear.
He leans on the edge of the bed behind Arthur, shakes out and refolds a bright orange bath towel.
Arthur takes in a deep breath that turns into a moan when Eames presses the towel into his side. He reaches above his head and grabs one of Eames’s pillows, his bloody fingers smearing it with long swatches of red. He presses it to the side of his face and breathes into it.
Eames mutters a nervous litany of It’s okay. It’s not that bad. as he continually refolds the towel and presses it back on to the wound, less and less blood seeping into it each time.
Arthur’s breathing evens out before Eames’s does. After about twenty minutes, he twists his shoulders back and looks up at Eames, asks him, “Did you have a good day today?” A small smile curls his lips. He’s obviously trying to lighten the mood.
A weak laugh tumbles out of Eames’s mouth. “I’ve had better.”
“Did you go for a walk?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I walked about two miles. Just through downtown.”
Arthur nods. “Good. Did you see anything interesting?” Arthur’s lectures on the history of Los Angeles have become an integral part of their walks. Eames’s eye will catch on something, and he’ll comment on it, prompting Arthur to impart all the knowledge he’s gained from fourteen years of living in the city and hundreds of hours spent in the Los Angeles Public Library.
Eames bites his bottom lip and pulls the towel off of Arthur’s torso. He tosses it on the floor and grabs another one from the foot of the mattress. “I did see one thing, actually. It was over on... Third or Second? It looked like a big red gate. And it had... train tracks behind it. But they weren’t flat. They were going up. To the street above.”
Arthur’s smile widens. “That’s Angel’s Flight.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a funicular.”
“That word means nothing to me.”
“It’s like a trolley. Or a shuttle. It was built in the early nineteen hundreds as a way to get commuters from one street to another.”
Eames shakes his head and chuckles. “Fucking Americans. Need to use a trolley to get from one street to the next.”
“Well, the thing about downtown is that it’s built on two levels, so it can actually take a long time to get from street up to the next.” Arthur shifts a bit, props his head up on his blood-stained pillow in order to look at Eames more directly. “And the area that it’s in, Bunker Hill, is right near the old banking district. So there were all these bankers that had to get to where they were going quickly.” He looks down his body to where Eames’s hands are pressed to his ribcage. “How’s it looking?”
Eames peels the towel from Arthur’s skin and examines it. Five minutes on the wound and there’s only a thin strip of blood on it. He turns it to show Arthur. “Looks like it’s stopping.” He peers down at the gash in Arthur’s side in order to get his first good look at it.
It’s about two inches long and lays about eight inches below Arthur’s armpit, close enough to the join of his arm to his body that he won’t be able to sew the skin back together with his own hands.
Eames feels Arthur’s eyes on him. He glances up to see the older man staring at him with a crinkle in between his brows.
Eames swallows. “You’ve given yourself stitches before, yeah?”
“Eames,” Arthur murmurs, “I can do it-”
Eames shakes his head. “Not without doing a shit job, you can’t.” He runs his tongue along his bottom lip. “I can do it. But you’re gonna have to talk me through it.”
“Are you sure?” Arthur asks softly.
Eames looks directly into Arthur’s eyes, nods. “Yeah, I am.” He takes a look at the medical supplies spilled across the mattress. “Do you have any alcohol I can clean it with?”
“Just use warm water and soap. Alcohol’s gonna be too harsh. The hand soap that you bought the other day will work just fine.”
Eames retrieves a bowl from the kitchen, fills it with water and a couple pumps of hand soap.
He gently wipes the great patch of blood that’s spread out from the wound off Arthur’s skin. Clear drops of water swirling with blood fall down Arthur’s pectorals and his shoulder blades and are absorbed by the towel underneath him.
Eames can’t help but admire the stretch of pale skin beneath his hands. Shallow peaks and valleys of muscle and bone. The freckles dusting Arthur’s shoulders. The little knot of skin that pushes out of his belly button. Eames’s eyes are following the trail of dark hair that runs up the middle of Arthur’s chest when he’s suddenly struck by how relatively unmarred his torso is.
He dabs at the skin around the wound and says, “I expected you to have more of these.”
Arthur lets out a small, amused hum. “If I did, that would mean I wasn’t very good at my job.”
“That’s not necessarily true. You weren’t always a master of your craft, yeah? You weren’t born a killer.”
Arthur’s stomach hollows out underneath Eames’s hands as he takes a deep breath, but he doesn’t respond.
Eames looks up to see Arthur staring at him, his lips slightly parted. A soft, reverent look in his eyes, as if Eames has just given him something precious.
Eames looks back down to his task. After a couple moments of silence, he nods toward Arthur’s right arm where it lays limply on the mattress. “Those scars on your arm are pretty nasty. Where’d you get those?”
Arthur looks down at his forearm where three short, jagged lines run parallel to each other. He sounds mildly amused when he explains, “I got those just a couple years ago. German shepherd.”
Eames winces. “Fucking hell.” He looks down at the long white line that runs across the left side of Arthur’s belly. “What about that one on your stomach?”
“I got that during one of my first jobs. NR-40.”
“What’s an NR-40?”
“Military combat knife.” Arthur laughs at the memory. “I nearly pissed my pants when I started bleeding. I thought I was gonna die.”
Eames flips the towel over to a dry side and begins to mop the damp from Arthur’s skin. “There’s one on your back too. Just below your right shoulder blade.”
Arthur begins to pick at the towel that he’s lying on. “I got that when I was fifteen.”
“What happened?”
Arthur is silent for a moment. “Something I’d rather not talk about.”
Eames nods. “Fair enough.” He tosses the towel on the floor behind him and gets up to walk around the mattress and rummage through the various tubes of cream in the First Aid kit. “Have you got Neosporin in here?”
“Yeah. It’s not brand name though. It just says ‘triple antibiotic ointment’ on it. There’s some numbing cream too for when you sew me up. I can’t remember what it says on it. It’s in a blue tube.”
Eames glances up at Arthur for a moment, and when he does, his eye catches on something that makes him pause. There are two small eight-pointed stars inked into Arthur’s chest, tucked into a spot that Eames wasn’t able to see while sitting behind him. They’re tattooed into the skin just below his shoulders and just above his pectorals.
Eames swallows. “There are stars on your chest.”
Arthur pulls his shoulders back and looks down his body, as if he’d forgotten that the tattoos were there. “Yeah. Yeah, I got those a few years ago. Just after my dad died.” He breathes out a small laugh. “That was back when I wanted the whole world to know how tough I was.”
Eames doesn’t move for a moment. He stares at the ink on Arthur’s chest and fiddles with the tube in his hand. The tattoos and their placement strike him as familiar, and the skin on his forearms pebbles when he remembers why. Before he can think the better of it, he says, quietly and almost to himself, “I’ve seen those before. Those tattoos.”
Arthur’s face freezes. “Have you?”
“Yeah... yeah, it was on one of those shows on, like, the Discovery channel. About...” He trails off, looks down at the metal box on the bed. “What color did you say the numbing cream was?”
“Eames... if there’s something you want to ask me about...” Arthur sighs. “Go ahead. I’d rather have everything out in the open.”
Eames nibbles on his lower lip. “The show. It was... it was about the Russian mafia.”
Arthur swallows, looks down and continues picking at the towel. “Is that what you want to know? Whether I’m part of the Russian mafia?”
Eames takes a deep breath and walks back around the bed to sit beside Arthur. He unscrews the cap from the tube, looks up at Arthur. “I was just wondering if that’s where you’re from. Russia.”
Arthur’s features soften. “What makes you think I’m not from here?”
Eames squeezes some cream onto his fingers and rubs it gently into Arthur’s skin. “You talk in your sleep.”
“So?”
“So... you don’t speak English when you do.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“How do you know I’m not just speaking gibberish?” Arthur is just teasing him at this point. “People say things that don’t make any sense in their sleep. Even make up words.”
“Well, your made-up words sound a lot like Russian.”
“How do you know what Russian sounds like?”
“Because I’ve seen Rocky IV at least a dozen times.”
Arthur chuckles and lets his head fall back against the pillow.
Eames reaches across him and drops the antibiotic cream on the mattress. “All right. Moment of truth. Time to stitch you back up.”
Arthur talks him through the process, his voice steady and assured. “Don’t hesitate once you’ve started piercing the skin. Follow through. It’ll only hurt more if you don’t do it quickly.”
Eames lets out a deep, relieved breath once he’s put the hook through both sides of the wound for the first time. He pulls it through with a pair of tweezers and ties the stitch, threads the hook again.
It gets easier after the second stitch. Eames’s fingers stop sweating, and his movements become more confident. It becomes a quiet and intimate act. The slight hitch in Arthur’s breath when the hook pierces him. The exhale as Eames pulls it through. The hand that Eames keeps splayed on Arthur’s side, holding Arthur’s skin where he wants it.
They’re on stitch number five when Arthur says. “It’s Ukrainian.”
Eames doesn’t look up from where he’s tying the thread. “What is?”
“The language that I speak in my sleep. It’s not Russian. It’s Ukrainian.”
Eames looks up at him. “Is that where you’re from?” His voice quiet, careful not to disturb the moment.
“Yeah. I grew up in a small city in the east. Donetsk. Came here when I was fifteen.”
“Fifteen? How is it that you don’t have an accent?”
Arthur grins down at him. “Practice.” His breath catches when Eames pushes the hook into his skin. “In my line of work, it’s best if people think that you’re just another average, harmless American.”
Eames nods. “Makes sense. Did you come here with your family?”
“No. I came by myself. My dad was already here.”
“What about your mum?”
“She still lives in Donetsk. With my brothers and sisters.”
“Do you ever go home and visit them?”
“No.” Arthur frowns. “No, I... I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t? Your employer won’t let you go?”
“No, I mean... There are a lot of people back home that... that wouldn’t be happy to see me.”
Eames nods and doesn’t press for more. He rubs his thumb gently across Arthur’s skin, allows his touch to tell Arthur that he doesn’t have to say anything more if he doesn’t want to.
“Where are you from?” Arthur asks him.
“England.”
“Really? I never would’ve guessed.”
Eames smiles. He suspects Arthur would have given him a soft thwack on the head for being cheeky if the angle weren’t so awkward.
“I was born in east London, but we lived all over. Nottingham, Hull, Leeds, Edinburgh. We even lived in Dublin for a couple years. Mum and dad could never stay in one place for too long. And neither of them could hold down a job for more than a couple months.”
“Did you enjoy it? Living in all those different places?”
“It was fun when I was younger. But as I got older, mum and dad started to...” This is why Eames doesn’t enjoy telling people his life story. He can’t do it without making his mum and dad sound cruel and himself pathetic. “They started to go off on their own for days or weeks at a time. Leave me to take care of my sister.” Eames shrugs, manages a small smile. “It was actually fun most of the time. We got to do whatever we wanted. Sometimes we’d run out of money but...” Eames ties off the seventh stitch in silence, unsure of what else to say.
“How did you end up here?”
“My nan, my dad’s mum, left us some money when she passed. Mum and dad decided to use it to move to L.A.”
“Why L.A.?”
“Why not? That was always mum and dad’s attitude. Why not?”
They’re both silent as Eames finishes tying off the last stitch and sits back to survey his work.
“So where’s your dad now?”
Eames gathers the hook and the tweezers up in a towel and places it on the end of the bed. “I don’t know. He disappeared almost as soon as we got here.” He gets up and walks to the other side of the bed, begins to look through the First Aid kit for bandages and tape.
“Eames?” Arthur’s voice is quiet and tired.
“Yeah?” Eames responds without looking up.
“I’m sorry.”
Eames’s head jerks up at that, and he’s about to give Arthur an earful about not needing his pity when he notices the look on Arthur’s face.
He looks drained, defeated. His head lolling to the side and his mouth moving around silent words that he can’t seem to push past his lips. At last, the words come spilling out. “I’m... I’m sorry that everything is so fucked up right now, and that I can’t- I can’t do anything... I can’t do anything except teach you a bunch of useless garbage, because I don’t know anything,” He gulps down a deep breath, and the skin around his eyes constricts. “And I’m not good at anything except- except fucking killing people-”
“Arthur,” Eames walks swiftly around the bed to sit at his side. Arthur looks up at him, blinking rapidly and breathing heavily. Eames digs his fingers into the mattress, wanting to touch Arthur but not knowing how to when he gets this worked up. “Arthur, don’t ever be sorry on my behalf. All right?” He gives Arthur a small grin. “I pity myself plenty. I don’t need you to pity me as well.”
Arthur lets out a deep breath. “Yeah... yeah, I guess we’ve both got ourselves covered on that front.”
Eames nods, smiles and reaches across Arthur to grab the gauze and the tape off the mattress. “And don’t talk that way about yourself. There are plenty of things you’re good at besides killing people. Like... well... I mean you are shite at cleaning up after yourself. And the only thing you know how to cook is eggs. And you couldn’t be called an apt conversationalist by any stretch of the imagination- ow!”
Arthur’s hand comes up to thump Eames on the side of the head. “Asshole,” he grumbles affectionately.
Eames chuckles and begins to cut up the gauze.
~
Arthur wakes up in pain the next morning, his liver filtering the acetaminophen out of his blood and the pain in his side growing until it has its own heartbeat. He grabs the bottle of Tylenol from where it’s laying beside him on the mattress and pops three into his mouth, picks up the cup of water that Eames left for him off the floor and chugs the whole thing.
He cranes his head back to look out the window. The sky is just beginning to lighten. It’s probably about six a.m.
He looks to his side and allows his gaze to rest on Eames, asleep just across from him on the ugly orange couch. He’s lying on his back, arms stretched above his head, blanket pooled around his hips. His bare chest rises and falls softly, his skin sallow in the orange light from the streetlamps. His full lips are pursed around slow, quiet breaths. He’s beautiful.
Sometimes, just looking at Eames makes Arthur ache. Opens up a wound that’s almost as old as Eames is.
Sometimes, Arthur looks at Eames and sees a ghost. A boy he once knew half a lifetime ago: Oli.
Eames is so much like him. The careful and hopeful way with which he moves through life. Desperate to belong somewhere, but in his very nature, belonging both nowhere and everywhere. The aggressive humor that he uses to fight damn near everything. His effortless grace and instinctual sensuality. The incalculable force of his will.
The way that he makes Arthur feel. As if just being who he is is important to someone. Just having him around makes Arthur sharper, stronger, keeps him on his toes. Arthur had almost forgotten that he can be funny.
Sometimes, Arthur will look at Eames and think, I know you. You’re dead. You died in my arms fourteen years ago.