jonquil in december

[wldnst]

part 1

The thing is, Cobb might actually know. Arthur is staring at him, and he sees Eames’ eyes flicker from his face to Cobb’s, like he’s trying to measure the likelihood that Cobb is telling the truth.

Pippa is grinning a little wryly, and while Arthur doesn’t doubt that the crying is real, and he almost wants Cobb to say it just to distract her, but he can’t help but feel he’s getting played like a fiddle by a sixteen-year-old.

“Arthur and Eames met in high school,” Cobb says.

“Don’t be ridiculous, dad,” Pippa says. “Eames is British.”

“It’s no less ridiculous than your story was going to be, Pips,” Cobb says.

“Don’t call me that,” Pippa mutters.

“And it wasn’t a dream,” Cobb finishes. He doesn’t look triumphant, though he may be quietly pleased. Everyone else stands there in silence, but Arthur can tell from Ariadne and Yusuf’s faces that they’re considering this.

“That actually explains some things,” Ariadne says, looking between Arthur and Eames. “Like the time you both took off to go to a high school reunion. I thought that was a euphemism for some sort of weird role-playing.”

Cobb looks exasperated.

“Ariadne, aren’t you uncontrollably nosy? They said they were going to a high school reunion and you didn’t say ‘Jinkies’ and get to the bottom of that?”

“He thinks I’m Velma,” Ariadne says, then turns to Yusuf and repeats herself. “He thinks I’m Velma.”

“Does that means he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for meddling?” Yusuf asks.

“I knew you were liars,” Pippa says.

“The chase in the Yukon really happened,” Arthur repeats. “It’s just not how we met.”

“So, were you already sleeping together?” Pippa says, and when Cobb scowls at her she just says “What?! Everyone’s wondering.”

“Kind of, yeah,” Ariadne says.

“I’m not a stalker, but yes,” Yusuf says. “This information is relevant.”

“No,” Arthur says at the same moment Eames says, “Yes.”

It’s Ariadne who narrows her eyes now, peering them at them from thin slits.

“You lost your virginities to one another,” she says, and then glances pointedly at Cobb. “Jinkies.”

Arthur refuses to discuss this in mixed company. He refuses to discuss this at all. Eames gives him a look that roughly translates to ‘Told you she’d be annoying,’ rolling his eyes a little in Ariadne’s direction.

“It’s none of your business,” Arthur says, a little primly.

“Dad, you told me no one gets together with their high school sweethearts,” Pippa says, twisting to look at Cobb.

“Well, I wouldn’t say they were sweethearts, exactly,” Cobb says. “Your mother knew the story better than I did.”

It’s Cobb’s quiet fondness for Mal that breaks Arthur, there. Something about the way he says ‘your mother,’ instead of her name, and the expression on his face, which seems sad in a comfortable way, sadness worn like an old coat, and it occurs to Arthur that he hadn’t trusted Cobb to come to terms with things, but maybe he has.

“I’ll tell it,” Arthur says.

Eames looks as surprised as anyone.

“No sex,” Arthur says to the general populace of the dream space. “But yeah, about the virginity thing.” He finds his hand swimming through the air to meet Eames’, and it’s not so much for reassurance as to demonstrate something, that this is real and has been for a long time. “Yeah, alright? Now you know.”

“Oh god, it was in the back of a car,” Ariadne says. “Wasn’t it? That’s adorable.”

“Please never apply that word to me again,” Eames says.

“Eames was the captain of the soccer team,” Arthur begins. “I was a copyeditor for the school newspaper--”

Eames actually transferred in their junior year, mid semester. His mother was a reporter who had gotten a gig as a foreign correspondent in Washington, and so suddenly the class at Arthur’s private Maryland high school was up one student, and kind of quietly stoic boy who looked like he had finished puberty well before anyone else had.

Arthur didn’t actually realize this until it came up in the journalism classroom one day after school. They’d ordered in a pizza--they did that, sometimes, if they sold enough ads or their advisor was feeling generous. That time it was the latter, and the pizza was the cheap kind with rubbery cheese, and Arthur was mopping the grease off his slice while discussing his odds of getting into West Point with his friend Ralph when Martha came in. She and Arthur were twins, and Ralph had a misguided crush on her based almost entirely on the fact that she acknowledged him in social situations.

“Oh, good, it’s a pizza day,” she said, opening the box they’d left on a desk in the middle of the room.

“Newspaper staff only,” Arthur mumbled around a bite of his own pizza, and Martha gave him a withering glance.

“Never stopped me before,” she said. “Don’t be a dumbass.”

Ralph snorted a little, then blushed when Martha glanced at him.

“Also, I know you always make sure there aren’t any olives because I don’t like them,” Martha continued.

“I don’t like olives, either,” Arthur said. “You know that.”

“‘Cause you’re twins,” Ralph said, and then both Arthur and Martha turned to peer at him uncertainly.

Ralph was socially unfortunate. It was a fact about him, equal in standing to the fact that his hair was dishwater blond and his eyes were blue, because he wore his social discomfort on the surface of his skin with his freckles. He wrote music reviews, mostly, and was something of a savant when it came to locating interesting records, but otherwise. He went on to become a producer of some sort, notoriously persnickety and unfortunate and brilliant.

“So,” Martha said around a mouthful. “You meet the new kid? He’s in our year. British. It’s quite the thing.”

“The thing?” Arthur asked.

“The thing,” Martha repeated. “To gossip about. But I realize your precious paper is always a week behind the rumor mill--except when it comes to music, yes Ralph--so I’m not surprised you weren’t aware.”

“Thanks Martha,” Ralph mumbled.

“Martha,” Arthur said. “I don’t particularly care.”

“Particularly is the clincher, though, isn’t it?” Martha asked, inspecting her nails. “I hear he’s in junior gym on Tuesdays.”

“Great,” Arthur gritted out. “I’m sure I’ll see him then.”

So Arthur was set against Eames before he even met him, simply by virtue of the fact that Martha saw fit to gossip about him. Martha didn’t tell Arthur things without reason, and it became apparent that Eames was the sort of person who exasperated Arthur, and, well, that was that.

They were on the archery unit in gym, and the bows were almost as long as Arthur was tall, which was embarrassing to begin with. He made up for it by being the best marksman in the class--Arthur had always been a good shot. The only thing his father liked about him as his aim.

The thing about Eames was, Eames was better, and he was larger besides--he had the kind of muscles Arthur had never really been able to develop, and when he drew back the bow you could see the cadence of it in his shoulders, and when he released it hit the target every. fucking. time.

What made it worse, though, was that when Arthur hit the target it was a sort of shameful thing, like he was a teacher’s pet or a show-off or a kid who wrote for the newspaper showing up jocks. When Eames did it just--was, and incomprehensibly, everyone else liked him. Arthur’s only vindication was that Eames didn’t seem to care for him much, either, judging by the amount of time they spent sniping at one another in the locker room.

In retrospect, Arthur really could have been a little more perceptive about the whole thing. Maybe he would have been, if he hadn’t spent so much time staring at the innards of his gym locker while slipping in and out of track shorts and old t-shirts while staunchly ignoring Eames’ barbs.

Actually, truthfully, ignoring Eames’ barbs was never really an option.

“You might want to consider glasses,” Eames said. “Because I’m not completely sure you can see the target properly.”

“What’s that? I’m sorry, your accent--are you from Australia?”

“Weak, Arthur,” Eames said, slamming his locker shut. “I know you can do better than that.”

And then Eames was gone, and Arthur was blinking at the gills of the grey-green locker in front of him, and wondering if he really could do better than that, and at what.

It actually became a thing. For years Arthur had intellectually distanced himself from his performance in gym class, pulling himself back from most of the team sports because these people were neither his friends nor really his peers, and releasing himself fully into sport felt like giving them something they didn’t deserve, and it would be more shameful to try and fail than never to try at all.

But with Eames there was a point to prove, suddenly, and it had nothing to do with intellectual superiority and everything to do with the burden of proof, which had suddenly fallen to Arthur, because something about Eames made Arthur want to prove himself to him. Until the archery unit wound up Martha would smile sardonically at him whenever he went to out to the range to practice, and then when they switched units, and Arthur started going to the weight room early in the morning and Martha just shrugged and said she could catch a ride to school with Emily at a reasonable hour.

It got worse when Arthur and Eames started talking, half by accident. It was just the usual things--idle questions, but Arthur was surprised to find himself answering them seriously, actually saying how he was, what classes he was concerned about and what events he was eager for, and then they’d be sitting on the bench in the locker room until they were just on the brink of being late for their next classes, and their jabs began to lack bite. When Thomas Nowak said it was starting to look a little gay Arthur pretty much ignored him because he was already aware that, yes, he spent half their conversations staring at Eames’ forearms, just because they were there, looped around his knees, and they were aesthetically appealing. They were the sort of forearms--they were just nice arms.

Okay, more than that. But Thomas Nowak was the one who said it was a “little gay.” Well, he used different words, but that was the idea. He spat it out when he was leaving the locker room and Arthur and Eames were still there, in their street clothes, discussing the relative merits of American breakfast cereals, and after that Arthur started feeling a bit self conscious about the whole thing, or worried Eames might feel self conscious, because Eames had a sort of reputation that was cooler than Arthur’s by a good few notches, and hanging around the guys’ locker room after class talking was not something that was done.

Mostly because the guys’ locker room smelled like ass, if we’re being frank. But being gay wasn’t really something that was done, either. So there was a week or so where their conversations where somewhat stilted on Arthur’s end, and he tried not to think about whether Eames would be able to pick him up wholesale and pin him against the tiles in the locker room showers.

And then Eames pinned Arthur to the ground during a field hockey match and Arthur found a boner pressed into his thigh.

So.
“Arthur,” Cobb says, jerking his head in James’ direction.

“Dad,” James says. “God. I know what a boner is.”

“This is inappropriate,” Cobb says. “And possibly sexual harassment.”

“You make it sound like I got a stiffy on purpose,” Eames says. “Picture this: it’s spring, okay? And the fields were muddy as shit, and Arthur’s proper writhing, and he used to wear these white shirts and obscene little gym shorts, and the mud, alright?”

“We get it,” Yusuf interjects, looking bored. “You two were horny teenagers.”

“Yes,” Arthur says. “And no.”

Arthur left the locker room fast that day. He actually didn’t bother changing--he went out to his car and set in the front seat in his muddy gym clothes with his knees wedged up against the steering wheel. He figured it wasn’t running so much as saving them both from the embarrassment of having to discuss it, because it was the sort of thing that merited discussion but also--maybe it was a mistake. Maybe Eames was imagining Arthur was a chick. Maybe Arthur was getting mud on the upholstery and skipping class, which he never did, but that was another discussion altogether, because he actually was getting mud on the upholstery and skipping class, and the rest of it--the rest of it was speculation. He knew that, fully, but he couldn’t face the possibility of those possibilities being real, because he had liked it.

Which shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. He liked the weight of Eames, Eames’ hands on his shoulders, the bright flecks in Eames’ eyes, Eames knees on either side of his thighs, the way their hips almost touched, almost slid together.
“You two are the worst,” Yusuf mumbles. “Seriously, the worst. Spare us the details, please.”

“You wanted to hear this,” Arthur says, looking around the dreamspace. “Someone wanted to hear this. Someone wanted truth, didn’t they? And if honesty is going to make you feel uncomfortably voyeuristic--seriously, just hear me out, and then we’ll be done and you can get trashed and try to forget if you want that, and also you can never ask about this story again.”

“I can’t get trashed,” James says. “I can never forget.”

So maybe Arthur lightens up on the details a little, because James is his godson and he doesn’t want to scar the kid. But the fact is--was--is--that all the things he hated about Eames when they first crossed paths, all the things that pissed him off and made him feel strangely inferior, were precisely the things that made him want to lift his hips out of the mud that little bit until their bodies were pressed fully together, were exactly the reasons that he spent a significant amount of time in his car alternately thinking and not thinking about what had happened during that unfortunate field hockey game. Arthur had never given much thought to the rhyme or reason of his attractions before, but the fact was that Eames was it, Eames was everything. Arthur knew that when he was seventeen with a preternatural clarity, it just took him a long time to accept it. It seemed like there should be more, but then there was Eames, strong and competent and sharp and beautiful and criminal.

“So I stewed in my car for awhile,” Arthur continues after a moment.

Eames didn’t show up at his house or anything--this isn’t that sort of story. What happened instead is much more straightforward, and that’s that Arthur went home and told Martha, lying on his back on the floor of her bedroom, staring at the ceiling and the glow-in-the-dark stars they’d pinned there years before, and Martha said, in her simple way:

“Just talk to him.”

Which is exactly what Arthur expected her to say, and then the only problem was that they didn’t have gym class the next day, and Arthur rarely saw Eames on days when they didn’t. They didn’t share any other classes or lunch periods; Arthur managed to suppress the urge to wonder whether Eames was avoiding him and just wait it out, and then the next day they were on the same team for field hockey, at least, and Arthur took his time in the locker room afterwards and when Eames seemed to be going pointedly slower Arthur just sat down on the bench--their bench--and waited.

“You skipped out on me the other day,” Eames said without turning around.

“It made sense at the time,” Arthur said.

“So,” Eames said. “Things make sense now?”

“No,” Arthur said.

And then he waited. Eames still hadn’t gotten his shirt on--he had stopped dressing when Arthur sat down, and now it looked like he was caught in amber, halfway between being the person he was in the hallway and the person he was in the locker room, talking with Arthur. It had never occurred to Arthur to bifurcate the two, because he so rarely saw Eames outside of gym, but the fact that Arthur never saw Eames outside of gym--that right there made the two people different.

“Arthur,” Eames said, turning around, finally, and settling down on the bench with both his feet planted flat on the floor.

“Arthur,” Eames repeated, like he was testing it. “Sorry about that. But--I can’t say it’s something I want to apologize for.”

“Explain that,” Arthur said. “Explain why you don’t want to apologize.”

“Because I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” Eames said. “And I’d keep you there a little longer. And I’d kiss you, because I’d like to know what that feels like.”

That was, in all honesty, all Arthur really needed.
“Are we done now?” Pippa asks. “Can I open my eyes?”

“You didn’t want to see my hot piece of seventeen-year-old ass?” Eames asks.

“Ugh, no,” she mutters. “You’re like my uncle. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a eunuch.”

“Apparently not,” James chimes in, and Cobb frowns.

“I think,” he says. “We’ve had enough for the night.”

And the others nod, somewhat blearily, and Ariadne catches Arthur’s eyes and gives him a little jerk of her chin, whether in approval or affirmation Arthur’s not sure. It doesn’t make sense to him--Ariadne wanted to hear the story, and he doesn’t understand why that was so important.

It’s only when they unplug from Cobb’s device that Arthur allows himself to think about those stories. He remembers chasing Eames down in the Yukon, and that was after they’d broken up because people didn’t stay with their high school boyfriends, it just didn’t happen, it was implausible that they had already met the people they were best suited to be with. He remembers, too, missing chemistry for the second time that week because of Eames, though the second time--was better than the first, he’ll say.

They’d broken it off during Arthur’s first year at West Point, and Eames had said he thought the military was shit, anyway, and America smelled like tarmac and fry grease, and then he’d fucked off to England to eat fish and chips or whatever. That was how Arthur had imagined it, anyway--Eames, somewhere grey, stuffing his face with fish and chips and then making out with someone who had crooked teeth and a monocle.

Arthur would be the first to admit that at eighteen he wasn’t particularly cultured, no matter how much he wanted to be.

He heard from Eames periodically, scrawl on postcards, most of which were lies. It was only later that Eames would tell Arthur what had happened in between then and the present, how he had become a thief because why not?, and then the possibilities of dream sharing had opened up for him, and then Arthur had shot out the rear window of his rental car somewhere in the Yukon, when Eames was going to meet with a bush plane operator to get to Alaska, from there to Japan. Arthur had been shocked when he’d turned up a picture of the forger Mal wanted, and that was part of the story, too.

They’ve been on and off since then, always on the brink of a completely committed relationship but never quite reaching it, and suddenly, now, in this moment, when Arthur looks at Eames as he flutters awake, and then at Pippa, who wishes she had a mother, and all the things Arthur has wished for and it seems ridiculous that he’s not taking this, this one thing, because it’s too good, because he doesn’t believe it can be real, because it’s something that doesn’t happen in real life.

They don’t live in real life, not completely. They live in dreams.

It’s hard to believe that it’s taken him this many years to realize that his entire relationship paradigm doesn’t make sense.

Everyone is looking at one another like they aren’t sure what happened here, now, and they’re quiet as they disperse and go to the their bedrooms. Arthur spends an inordinately long time brushing his teeth, staring at his own face in the mirror, wondering if he’s always this pale or it’s just a temporary thing, and then Eames calls him back, reels him in.

Arthur and Eames have had a lot of sex. It’s a simple fact: they had sex once, memorably, in the locker room of their high school gymnasium, which smelled like Axe and teenage boy, during a class reunion neither of them had actually wanted to attend. Arthur’s back pressed was against slick tile and Eames hissing things in his ear about how hot he’d looked in gym shorts and mud. They’ve had sex in dreams and out of them; they’ve had sex in both of their own beds, several motel rooms beds, and once in the attic room of Eames’ mother’s house; they had sex several times in a yurt in Mongolia and exactly once on the beach, after which they both decided they didn’t like the places sand could wind up.

The point is that the simple act of sex should be familiar by now, ordinary, maybe on the brink of dull. Just the two of them and a normal sized bed--not like that small, sagging thing in the hotel in Whitehorse before they left the Yukon, where fitting together was like a particularly terrible game of Tetris and Arthur woke up with Eames’ knee wedged between his legs--no danger, no pressure at all.

It should be familiar, but it isn’t. Every time Arthur finds himself staring at the mole on Eames’ hip like it’s a revelation, feels a sudden, possessive heat curling inside his chest when he sees the curve of Eames’ ass, the easy strength he carries in his biceps, thighs, shoulders. It’s the sort of thing they write stories about, the sort of thing Pippa makes fun of, spanning nations and continents and more years than it reasonably should.

All this maybe explains why Arthur stares for a minute that stretches on to several when Eames starts to strip down that night, in the big room at the end of the hall. They’ve turned out the lights already but there’s a full moon, hanging heavy and low in the picture window, and when Eames peels off his shirt his bare back is traced silver.

“What?” he asks, glancing up. “See something you like?”

“Every fucking day,” Arthur says, more fiercely than he’d intended.

“Mmm,” Eames hums, crossing the room in a few long strides. “You’re wearing more clothes than I am. Is this going to be like the time you were the schoolmaster and I was--”

“No,” Arthur says, blinking. He doesn’t want it to be like that at all, he wants it to be just them. He leans forward. Eames is broader than he is, but they’re of height, and their noses touch in what he and his sister used to call an Eskimo kiss, their eyes meet in the dim light.

“I want you,” Arthur says, hissing a little through his teeth. “To carry me to that bed, and fuck me like it’s our goddamn wedding night, and we’ve never fucked before.”

“Our goddamn wedding night?” Eames says. “Is it damned because there’s no way either of us is a virgin?”

Arthur has always been a little quicker than Eames, if it’s going to come down to that, and now he snakes his arms around Eames’ neck and pulls their mouths together so fast their foreheads bump, harder than he intended but not hard enough to distract him from his mission, which is primarily to make Eames shut the fuck up, but secondarily to get Eames to carry Arthur to bed and undress him and fuck him six ways to next Sunday. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and the primary mission is secondary.

It pretty quickly doesn’t matter much at all, because Eames is kissing Arthur with a concentrated intensity, like he’s trying to memorize this and this moment, and the moonlight is slithering in between them and casting long shadows under Eames’ eyelashes, his cheekbones.

“Hello,” Eames says when they pull apart.

“Hello,” Arthur replies, and then Eames is cupping his ass and lifting him up, and Arthur lifts his legs and loops them around Eames’ waist so their hips slot together the way they would when they were seventeen and Eames still thought Arthur was fragile. Eames dips his head in for another kiss even as he spins the pair of them around and deposits Arthur on the bed, pressing his hands into the quilt on either side.

“Like we’ve never fucked before?” Eames asks, leaning in so close his lips brush Arthur’s even as he’s speaking. “Like I’ve never seen you before? Or undone all--these--buttons?”

Eames reaches for the top button of Arthur’s oxford, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger before flicking it open and peeling the collar back from Arthur’s shirt.

“Never seen your collarbone?” he asks, bending forward to suck the place where it juts out, just below Arthur’s shoulder. His fingers are already toying with the second button, and then he dips his head in and pulls at it with his teeth until it pops off.

“Fuck, Eames--” Arthur hisses.

“Don’t complain about the shirt,” Eames says. “Don’t complain about the shirt, I know you’re an expert at reaffixing buttons.”

“God, no,” Arthur says, slipping his hand to the back of Eames’ neck, threading his fingers through the hair at his nape and then pulling his head up again.

“I want to see you. I haven’t seen you before, either,” Arthur says. “Your fucking magnificent shoulders. Or your cock.”

“You haven’t have you?” Eames asks, glancing down at his briefs, which are so thin that Arthur really should’ve thrown them out for him, already. “Well, I think you’re beginning to get an idea.”

“I want it in me,” Arthur says, looking Eames in the eye.

“Well we need to get you out of your trou, then, don’t we?” Eames asks. “Patience is a virtue.”

“Not one you have,” Arthur says, and then he bites Eames’ lower lip.

It makes Eames’ arch his back and moan, which is more or less the response Arthur had anticipated, because this is getting too close to role playing for his liking, right now, and the point is that it’s new and old, fresh and familiar, every time.

“We’re going to ruin this quilt, aren’t we?” Arthur says suddenly, and Eames’ lips quirk into a wry grin as he hooks his thumbs through the beltholes on Arthur’s pants.

“Probably,” he says, tugging, and Arthur lifts his hips slightly and then he’s bare-assed on the blanket, and Eames is grinning at him.

“Pretty decent Solstice present,” he says, collapsing onto the bed and pulling Arthur on top of him. “If you’re going to insist on doing presents for Solstice.”

“Pretty decent?” Arthur asks, and Eames laughs, cupping his hands around Arthur’s ass and sending tremors of laughter though his chest.

“You know what I mean,” he says, and slips a finger in, one and then two, and when Arthur inhales a little too quickly Eames says, “You like that? You want a little more?”

And that’s pretty much what happens, Arthur likes this, a little more, a little more-- until they’re lying, spent, on top of the bedspread.

“We’re both virgins so we didn’t need condoms, right?” Eames whispers to Arthur, and Arthur shoves him in the shoulder a little.

“Does this mean you want to get married?” Eames asks, and Arthur studies the play of light on the ceiling.

“No,” he says. He thinks about adding, Aren’t we already?

“How do you feel about the Mediterranean?” he says instead. The idea surprises even himself. “Coastal Croatia or somewhere. As a compromise.”

“You’d move for me?” Eames asks. “I’m honored.”

“Only if you’d move for me,” Arthur says, twining their fingers together. “But, you know, I figure we need to do something, eventually. I can’t seem to get rid of you.”

Eames hums a little, pressing his lips into Arthur’s neck.

“It has been a long time, hasn’t it?” he says. “But it’s been good. And it's only getting better.”