good road (home)
.good road (home)
eames hates his life, gets drunk, and ends up stateside. then there is a road trip. written for this prompt.
r . 8493 words
When Eames wakes up, he is sitting upright, his forehead lolling against a miniscule window. His head is pounding.
The headache suggests a hangover. The window suggests an airplane. The lights are dim, and the woman next to him is asleep. He’s not even sure where he’s going.
Memories begin to trickle in slowly, and then they begin to flood: quiz night at the pub. Their team winning, largely on Yusuf’s merit. A round of drinks and then another round of drinks. Several more rounds of drinks. Another pub, when the one with the quiz night kicks them out. Something that seems to have been a strip club on amateur night, although Eames was so drunk by then he can’t entirely trust his memory.
And then back to his apartment. And then Heathrow. Eames isn’t sure why anyone would let him buy a ticket, inebriated as he surely was, but--ah yes, there it is, rising up in his memory: he signed the woman behind the desk’s breast. Fame is so lovely.
It occurs to Eames, that since it was quiz night at the pub, it must be somewhere between Tuesday and Wednesday, and he still isn’t entirely sure where he’s going. He flags over a flight attendant, and she peers down at him.
“Where,” Eames whispers. “Is this plane going?”
“Houston,” she says without batting an eye, which suggests that Eames was lewd and drunk when he boarded, the sort of person who would be on a plane but uncertain of its destination.
“How long does that take?” Eames asks.
“We’ll be landing in Houston in three hours, sir,” the flight attendant says, and her accent is curt and American. “You can check our progress on the seatback console.”
After the flight attendant leaves, it occurs to Eames that he must have a boarding pass somewhere, and he fishes his bag out from under the seat.
Houston is just a stopover, it turns out, because there’s another boarding pass that will take him to Seattle. Apparently his drunk self has an overwhelming urge to see the Space Needle, or get coffee at the original Starbucks, or something. There is no accounting for drunk Eames’ taste.
Eames goes back to sleep, because he can’t think about this right now.
When he wakes, daylight is piercing his eyelids, and the captain has turned on the seatbelt sign. Eames can taste the sleep and the booze on his breath, and he knows his drunk self failed to pack a toothbrush, because that’s the way these things go.
As soon as they’re off the plane, Eames fishes his mobile (thank god it’s a satellite) out of his pocket and calls Yusuf. He has 213 missed calls, which is more than he thought were possible.
He’s not sure what time it is in England right now; probably the evening, actually, judging by the fact that his body seems to want to sleep yet again.
Yusuf picks up on the first ring; practically before the first ring.
“Fuck, Eames, where are you?”
“Houston,” Eames says, squinting. “It’s sunny.”
“Eames,” Yusuf says. “Please tell me this is a joke, and you just overslept by a lot, or were too hungover to come in or something, which is pretty unprofessional, but not as unprofessional as flying to Houston in the middle of the night.”
“No,” Eames says. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I flew to Houston. There’s a man in cowboy boots here.”
“Fuck,” Yusuf says again, but this time he drags it out over several more syllables. “I knew I shouldn’t have let your unhappy ass drink that much.”
“Yeah, I guess not.”
“When’s the soonest you can get back?” Yusuf asks, finally.
“I’m not sure, actually,” Eames says. “I seem to have booked a flight to Seattle as well.”
Eames can hear Yusuf groaning into the phone.
“Eames, don’t go to Seattle. For the sake of all that’s good and holy, don’t go to Seattle.”
“You don’t really need me on set right now, do you?” Eames asks.
“You’re the Doctor, Eames. We need you on set.”
“No,” Eames says. “You just think you do. All my bits are wrapped up. I’m brilliant.”
“Eames,” Yusuf says, and his tone is getting dangerous.
“Tell everyone I’ll be back in ten days,” Eames says, because ten days seems like enough. He hangs up.
Yusuf calls him back immediately, of course, but Eames turns the mobile off and puts it back in his pocket, then goes to find the gate for his next flight. Which wasn’t how Eames had expected things to go at all. When Eames had called Yusuf, he’d planned to find the first flight from Houston back to Heathrow and catch it, and then he’d be back on set in a day or two, and no one would fire him or question his loyalty to his job.
This is a terrible idea. But they are almost done with filming for the season, and his life may be okay as long as Eames is the Doctor, but as soon as he isn’t it all goes to shit. Because Eames is Eames, and not the Doctor, and it may make him a pathetic whiny ungrateful bitch to complain about this, but he doesn’t actually like the lived reality of his life. He spends a lot of time inside his flat, looking at walls, and some days he doesn’t leave at all, because his body feels so heavy around him, because if he does outside people will expect him to be some charming combination of Eames and the Doctor.
Now, suddenly, he has momentum. And it turns out he’s not about to give it up.
Momentum or no, he sleeps all the way to Seattle.
He turns on his phone when he gets there, and the missed call count has gone up, and he has a new text from Yusuf: moffat sez whatevs, but smith would never have pulled this shit.
Eames texts back: f.u. And then, after a moment: thnx, c u in 10 my good companion. Then he turns off his phone again, hefts his carry-on over his shoulder, and walks out of the airport.
He buys a toothbrush first, then gets a taxi to take him to the original Starbucks.
When Eames gets in the door he remembers he hates Starbucks, but he wants to use the bathroom to brush his teeth, and even a bad coffee sounds really good right now, so he orders a cup of coffee from the kid behind the counter.
He orders coffee, black, the cheapest on the menu, but before he can stalk off somewhere to wait, the kid looks up at him, and does something like a double-take, only the change in his face is so incremental Eames wouldn’t have noticed, if he wasn’t good at reading faces and also looking at this kids’ face.
He’s probably not a kid, actually. He’s probably in his early twenties, and Eames is only twenty-nine, but the kid’s face is open like a kid’s. He’s cute, really, dark hair and squinting, smiling eyes.
“You’re the Doctor,” says the kid.
“No I’m not,” Eames says, and considers making a crack about Americans thinking all British people looking alike. But the kid looks so hopeful, so Eames just adds, “But I play him on T.V.”
The kid breaks into a grin, and dimples appear in his cheeks.
“I knew it! My little sis loves Doctor Who. Can I get your autograph?”
“For your sister?” Eames asks, and he can’t help it if he’s skeptical. He looks at the kid’s name tag, which says ARTHUR, only upside down. Arthur fishes around in his pocket, and hands him a pen and a napkin.
“Oh, you don’t have to believe me, just make it out to Ariadne. That’s A-R-I-A-D-N-E. She’ll be so stoked.”
For some reason, Eames just takes the things and scribbles that down, doodles a little police box for good measure. He hates autographs. Arthur is beaming.
“She actually liked Matt Smith better, but she’s warming up to you, and she thinks the new companion is great.”
Eames looks at him, and hands the napkin back. “I’ll be sure to let Yusuf know,” he says, and can’t quite hide his laugh. “Your name badge is on upside down, Arthur.”
Arthur frowns, and looks down at his apron. He’s adjusting the pin when Eames goes to sit down, and then he puts the napkin in his pocket and ducks off to the back. A few minutes later he reappears at the other end of the bar with a ceramic mug. Eames goes up to get it, but Arthur withholds.
“Actually, this isn’t your order.”
Eames looks around the cafe. It’s an odd hour on a Wednesday evening, and there’s one other filled table, a touristy looking group with cups in front of them.
“It’s mine,” Arthur says quickly, and produces another mug. “Yours is here. I tweaked it a bit.”
Eames looks at him and Arthur shrugs.
“People only order black coffee here when they want to use the bathroom,” he says. “And our stuff isn’t that good straight. I just made you a latte.”
Eames looks at the mug. Arthur’s done that thing that baristas do, where they make a little leaf in the froth, and actually a latte sounds just about spot on.
“Thanks,” he says, and Arthur settles his hips against the counter behind him and brings his own mug to his lips, alternately blowing and sipping.
“What’re you having?” Eames asks, because he finds he doesn’t want to sit down just yet.
“London fog,” Arthur says, and his lips quirk upwards at the corners. “Earl grey with steamed milk and sugar, basically.”
“Want to sit with me?” Eames asks, and is surprised by himself.
Arthur looks at the door, and shrugs. “Sure.”
So they bring their cups over to Eames’ table, and sit down facing one another, Arthur is still blowing on his tea before every sip, and Eames finds himself watching his mouth.
“I burn my tongue a lot,” Arthur says. “The only thing that can fix it is sucking on a spoonful of honey because it was cutting into profits, but my boss said I had to stop eating all the honey, so I’m trying not to burn my tongue.”
This strikes Eames as a bizarre and slightly erotic confession, though Arthur doesn’t seem to think so--but judging from their interactions thus far, Arthur seems to be remarkably hard to ruffle.
“You could wait,” Eames says.
“I could,” says Arthur. “But I don’t want to.”
They both consider this for a moment.
Arthur breaks the silence first.
“So, what brings you to Seattle?”
“I’m not sure, actually,” Eames says. “I just wound up here.”
“That kind of happened to me, too,” Arthur says, and then they’re quiet again. The bell rings on the door, and Arthur goes to help the customers, and when he walks away Eames looks at the ties of the green apron across his back.
Arthur waves, when Eames leaves, and Eames goes to find a hotel so he can sleep some more.
When he wakes up, Eames is naked and sprawled out on his hotel mattress, and he feels refreshed for the first time in a long time. He puts on yesterday’s rumpled airplane clothes.
He goes to the Space Needle, but it’s not significantly better than the London Eye, is actually more boring, because it’s not a ferris wheel. He has nine more days left, and apparently he’s already run out of things to do. Largely because he doesn’t know shit about Seattle. But he can’t lose his momentum, so he goes back to Starbucks. Some girl is behind the counter, and a blond is working the espresso machine in the back.
“Excuse me,” he says. “Someone named Arthur works here?”
“Yeah?” she says, snapping her gum and looking at him expectantly.
“Is he working today?”
“Nah, he was in this morning,” she says. “I think he’s leaving town today, actually.”
“Could you give me his number?” Eames asks, before he can think about what a terrible idea this is.
The girl pauses and cranes her neck over the counter, then looks Eames up and down. This takes a minute, and she actually nods when she’s done.
“Sure,” she says, and goes to talk to the blond, who turns to look at him.
The blond comes over, squinting menacingly at Eames.
“You want Arthur’s number?” he asks.
“Yes,” Eames says. “Sir.”
“And Arthur won’t mind you having his number?”
“If he does, I won’t call him,” Eames says. The blond looks skeptical, then pulls out his own phone, dialing quickly.
“Arthur,” he says after a few minutes. “There’s someone here--” he looks at Eames.
“Eames.”
“Someone here named Eames who wants your number.”
There is a pause, and the blond name nods a couple times, then flips his phone shut. He writes something down on a napkin and hands it to Eames.
“If you’re a dick, I will take your dick,” he says, and goes back to the espresso machine.
Eames calls the number. Arthur picks up on the first ring.
“Hey Doctor,” he says, and Eames suddenly realizes he doesn’t know what to say.
“I have eight more days here and I’ve run out of things to do,” Eames says, after a pause.
“Well,” says Arthur. “I’m leaving for Rhode Island today.”
“Oh,” says Eames, because he’d kind of hoped Arthur would be his tour guide. “Well, I guess you’re packing, so I won’t bother you.”
“You could come with. If you haven’t booked a ticket back yet.”
“I haven’t,” Eames says.
“You’ll come with, then,” Arthur says. “I could use a second driver, if you can manage to stay on the right side of the road.”
So Arthur gives Eames an address, and Eames hails a taxi. It’s so simple and clear, and Eames isn’t sure how this happened. There’s no reason for Arthur to trust him. There’s no reason for any of this to be happening, but it is.
Arthur lives in a house on the edge of the city, and when Eames arrives he’s sprawled out on the lawn in shorts, a t-shirt, flip-flops, talking to a dark-haired girl dressed almost identically. When the taxi pulls up, Arthur gets to his feet and offers a hand to the girl, and then they’re both there, greeting Eames.
“Hey,” Arthur says easily, and then the girl, who must be Ariadne, sort of gapes at him.
“I love Doctor Who,” she says.
“You must be Ariadne,” Eames says. She looks to be in her late teens, and she’s wearing a Star Trek t-shirt, apparently unironically. “Arthur says you liked Matt Smith.”
“Yes, but now I’ve met you so maybe the twelfth doctor isn’t so bad,” Ariadne shrugs, and suddenly she is just like her brother--open, yet simultaneously indifferent.
“Not bad for a ten-second meeting. But I’ll try to get Matt to sign something for you, if I run into him.”
“We need to get going,” Arthur interjects. “If we’re going to make it to Spokane tonight.”
They all head towards the house, and Eames sees an old, boxy Volvo parked in the driveway, coloured a dusty blue.
“Not quite a police box, but it’ll do,” Arthur says, when he sees him looking.
“Hey,” Ariadne says. “Can you give me any spoilers? Future episode plotlines?”
“Sorry, darling,” Eames says. “That’s classified.”
“Damnit,” Ariadne says. “I like Matt Smith better, again.”
“Low blow, sis,” Arthur says, and opens the front door of the house.
There’s food in the kitchen: a giant ziploc bag full of what Arthur and Ariadne call gorp, which turns out to be a mixture of peanuts, raisins, and m&ms; a few loaves of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly; an opaque grocery bag containing other mysterious victuals. Arthur gives half of this to Eames, and they load it up in the car; then go back inside, where Ariadne has made up egg salad sandwiches for them, with milk.
“Where are your parents?” Eames asks, because there are pictures on the walls of all four of them, slender and dark-eyed, and there’s something strangely domestic about Arthur and Ariadne, about sitting at a granite counter eating egg salad sandwiches with milk, that seems like it calls for parents if they aren’t the parents themselves.
“Work,” Ariadne says through a mouthful.
“They said good-bye this morning,” Arthur adds.
“Oh,” Eames looks between them, and it seems like there’s something unsaid, but he doesn’t try to push it. “So, Spokane,” he says instead.
“Spokane,” says Arthur, stuffing the last of his sandwich into his mouth. Ariadne makes a disgusted face, then somehow manages to stuff more sandwich in her mouth, and then she lifts her milk in a toast. Arthur taps his glass to hers, and they both wash it down.
Eames looks at them.
“Sorry,” Ariadne says. “It’s our sibling rivalry.”
“You have a sibling rivalry about who can fit the most food in your mouth?”
“Yeah,” Ariadne says, and Arthur is nodding. “It embarrasses our parents, too.”
Eames is trying not to think about blowjobs, right now, but it’s hard.
“Anyway,” Arthur says. “Lunch is over, let’s go.”
Arthur loads Eames up with half the food, and grabs a leather satchel from off the staircase, and then they’re outside, and Arthur kisses Ariadne on the cheek and hugs her tight, and Eames gives her a sort of awkward one-armed hug because apparently they hug in this family, and adopt people quickly, even people who are television stars in foreign countries. Ariadne is waving and shouting as they pull out of the driveway, and she chases the car to the end of the block, laughing. Arthur’s laughing, too.
It’s so joyful Eames thinks he might cry.
“On the road again,” Arthur sings tunelessly when they merge onto the highway. “Just can’t--WAIT--to be on the road again.”
He drums on the steering wheel, too, and it strikes Eames that this is probably what he would do if Eames weren’t here at all. So Eames settles back into his seat with its uncomfortable headrest, turns his head towards the window, and watches the land roll past, because that’s what he would do if Arthur weren’t here at all.
“Where are we going?” he asks Arthur, when they pass the city limits.
“Spokane,” Arthur says. “Then some other places. Then Rhode Island. I have a road atlas somewhere.”
“What’s in Rhode Island?” Eames asks.
“Oh--sorry. College. I’m going back to college. It’ll be my senior year.”
“What are you studying?”
“Architecture.”
Eames nods, and they both fall silent. It’s strange, because normally silences like this make Eames feel like he should fill them up to overflowing, but with Arthur he just sits there in the passenger seat, and occasionally they discuss radio channel selection, and it’s alright.
“Did you go to college?” Arthur asks, continuing their conversation after it’s been dead an hour.
“Yeah. Studied theatre,” Eames says.
“Did you like stage better than television?”
People ask that a lot, but this time Eames pauses and thinks about it.
“They’re different,” he says, which is what he usually says. But the back of his mind is still churning, because it occurs to him that he did like stage better than television, he does. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time.
“I’ve done some set design,” is all Arthur says.
“Yeah?” Eames asks.
“Yeah.”
Eames goes back to looking out the window, but he doesn’t see the landscape whipping by any more. Instead, he thinks about not liking television, and he tries to pinpoint why. He thinks it has something to do with fame, the way he is no longer just the character he plays, but now he must also play himself in public.
Which is maybe what he likes here, that no one recognizes him. No one expects him to be Eames, who plays the Doctor. Except Arthur, but, well. He may recognize Eames, but he doesn’t seem to expect anything for it.
It’s not dark yet, when they get to Spokane. They’re staying in a flat that apparently belongs to a college friend of Arthur’s who is currently out of town.
“I’ve a tent, for the other nights,” Arthur says, groping under the doormat for a key to unlock the door.
“I have money,” Eames says, looking at him, and Arthur laughs.
“Yeah, but camping’s nice.”
Eames disagrees, but for some reason he chooses not to voice it. It occurs to Eames that he doesn’t have a sleeping bag, and he does say that.
“I brought a spare,” Arthur says, and Eames doesn’t respond to that, because there’s something lovely about being taken care, but saying so seems maudlin.
“Can we go to a store?” he says instead. “My drunk self packed no clothes.”
“Your drunk self?” Arthur asks, raising an eyebrow. “Sometime you’ll have to explain how you got here.”
“What do they teach you in the schools here? When a man loves a woman very, very much...”
Arthur laughs. “Weak joke, Eames. But I’m sure we can find you something.”
They end up wandering Spokane, weaving in and out of stores. In the first shop, Arthur tells Eames he has terrible taste and then proceeds to treat him like a paper doll. In the second, Arthur makes him buy three t-shirts Eames is pretty sure are a size too small. In the third, jeans with holes in them and a plaid button-down. Eames spends most of the time watching Arthur's eyes roam his body assessingly, wondering if he's gay or just very serious about properly fitted clothing. Because this is Arthur, it could really go either way, though Eames settles on the latter after seeing Arthur eying up a shop girl in the fourth stop.
Maybe it’s because Eames is distracted, or because Arthur is excessively complimentary, but he ends up buying far more clothes than he needs for the next eight days. Also, a battered suitcase from a resale shop, to keep them in.
When they get back to the flat, they watch TV until it’s time to sleep, when it becomes apparent that there’s only one bed, which Arthur makes Eames take. Maybe it’s because he just spent several hours doing everything Arthur said, but Eames doesn’t fight it.
“How old are you?” Eames asks the next morning when they’re in the car eating McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches.
“Twenty-one,” Arthur says. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine,” Eames says. “I shouldn’t let you boss me around so much. When I was eighteen, you were ten.”
“I’m an old soul,” Arthur replies, and it should sound strange, but it doesn’t. It sounds about right. “Tell me something, Eames.”
“What?”
“Anything,” says Arthur.
Eames sits in silence for a bit, looking at the highway in front of them.
“I got drunk on Tuesday night and flew to Seattle,” he says.
“I’d guessed as much.”
“I’m not happy,” Eames says.
“I’d guessed that, too.”
“Then why do I need to tell you?”
“Because,” Arthur says, then adds. “My parents moved to Seattle after I left for college.”
“Oh,” Eames says, and Arthur fiddles with something in the door, and puts in a CD, and things are quiet again, otherwise.
After lunch, they switch, and Eames drives. The car is manual, and it’s weird to shift with his right hand, but he gets used to it eventually. After stalling twice. Arthur just laughs, and seems unconcerned.
“The mountains here are strange,” Eames comments when they cross the Great Divide, because they are. They rise out of pancake flatness, sharp and jagged at their peaks.
“They’re different, back east,” Arthur offers. “Softer.”
“Is that where you’re from?” Eames asks.
“Yeah,” Arthur says, and looks out the window.
“Tell me something, Arthur,” Eames says.
“I miss it,” Arthur says.
“But we’re going back,” Eames says, and the words are out before he can catch the ‘we’re’ and change it to ‘you’re’. Arthur shrugs.
“I’m from New Hampshire, not Rhode Island.”
“Oh,” Eames says. “America is very big, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Arthur says, nodding. “It is. Things are closer together in New England, though.”
Eames laughs a little, at New England, even though he was aware they called part of this country that.
They cross the Continental Divide.
“Now we’re going with the water, not against it,” Arthur points out. Eames nods.
Arthur gives him directions off the highway, and they wind through a series of increasingly slender roads until they reach the place where they’ll camp that night and the next, in some National Forest adjacent to Yellowstone.
“I would try to take you to Yellowstone,” Arthur says. “But this is way cheaper.”
“It’s nice,” Eames says, looking around. It is--there are trees, and mountains, and Arthur is pitching the tent in a small clearing.
Eames sits on the picnic table.
“Want to make peanut butter jelly sandwiches?” Arthur asks, and so Eames gets the bread from the car, and makes himself and sandwich with just jelly and one with both for Arthur.
“Ta-da,” Arthur says, from over by the tent.
“That fits two people?” Eames asks.
“It’s a three person tent, actually,” Arthur shrugs.
“Three children, I assume,” Eames says.
“I share it with Ariadne all the time,” Arthur replies.
Eames resists pointing out that Ariadne is tiny. And also, Arthur’s sister.
They eat their sandwiches, and then Arthur gets a deck of cards from the car and they play war. Which is really is the stupidest game, and doesn’t really keep Eames from pondering the logistics of folding both their bodies into the small tent.
When night falls, they walk with a flashlight to the bathrooms, then back to their site. Arthur unzips the tent and crawls in, and Eames follows him, and finds the sleeping bags all laid out, one blue and one red.
“You get blue,” says Arthur, and begins to strip, which was a component of this experience Eames had not anticipated. Arthur looks at him askance, and Eames peels off his clothes as well, and buries himself in the blue sleeping bag. He rolls over so is back is to Arthur, and it’s too warm in the sleeping bag, and he can hear Arthur breathing behind him, and it’s hard to sleep.
When he wakes up, he is out of the sleeping bag, and his arm is thrown across Arthur’s waist, and their legs are tangled together.
It’s nice, but it can’t last. Eames disentangles himself, and Arthur rolls over and blinks up at him.
“Good morning,” Arthur says. His hair is mussed and his eyes are large and dark with sleep, and for the first time Eames thinks going along with this--all of it, the road trip, the camping, the casual camaraderie--might be a bad idea.
“Good morning,” Eames replies. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
Morning at the campground is nice--there are birds singing, and the air is clear and fresh. There’s a brook, bright a burbling, and with the mountains behind it’s embarrassingly idyllic. Eames is pretty sure he has no right to be in this place, where people do wholesome things like sleep outdoors, where people invite complete strangers to drive cross-country with them.
Which is why Eames can’t molest Arthur; he is wholesome and lovely and clean and kind, and Eames has a sordid tabloid history, only some of which is false, and a tendency to stumble in and out of relationships too quickly.
Eames goes to an empty campsite to sit on a picnic table and fishes out his mobile and calls Yusuf, just because.
“Hey,” Yusuf says. “How are the states treating you?”
“So I’m camping,” Eames tells him. “Somewhere in Montana.”
“Seriously? You’re camping? We did an episode where you had to pretend to sleep outside, and you practically had a conniption.”
“There’s a stream here,” Eames says. “Hear it?”
“Now, there’s an obvious question I could ask here, and I’m trying very sorely to resist. Please answer it for me,” Yusuf says, and Eames grins and misses him. Just a little. It’s to be expected, when you see someone every day and then you don’t.
“I’m still Eames,” Eames says. “This is Eames.”
“No,” Yusuf says. “The other obvious question.”
“I’m with a guy,” Eames sighs. “But it’s not like that.”
“Eames, it’s never ‘not like that’ with you. It is, in fact, always like that.”
“It’s not like that with me and you.”
“And more’s the pity. It would be so good for ratings.”
“This is true,” Eames replies. “Wanna bang?”
“No,” Yusuf says. “Anyway, as happy as I am to know you haven’t been shot, you should save your phone battery because I know your drunk self didn’t pack a charger.”
“Actually, I did. But it doesn’t work in American outlets.”
“Bully for you, then. See you in a week.”
“So long,” Eames says, and hangs up.
When he gets back to the site Arthur is boiling water on a little stove, and has a portable French press set out on the table.
“Coffee,” he says, gesturing. Eames nods, and Arthur pours them each a cup, then sets his down and arches into a stretch.
Eames is not sure how he missed Arthur’s loveliness when they first met, but somehow he did, and now that minor oversight has come back to bite him the ass.
“Let’s go for a hike,” Arthur says, after they’re finished with their coffee and their bread with jam.
Going for a hike is not like Eames expects. They follow the stream from the campground, instead of a trail, and Arthur tells him useless factoids about nearby trees. They eventually make it down to where the stream meets a broad river, and Arthur smiles beatifically.
“Have you ever been skinny dipping, Eames?” he asks.
“I think that water is very cold,” Eames says.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Arthur replies, and begins to strip again, and Eames has to wonder at Arthur’s complete ease with nudity. Eames is aware he’s attractive, but prefers to express this awareness by keeping his pants on around strangers. Arthur, apparently, has no such qualms.
Eames finds himself following suit, simply because it seems lousy to stand around fully clothed when someone else is naked, and also because he’d follow Arthur’s pert little ass anywhere.
Once he’s in the river, which is clear and cold and rock-bottomed, he can kind of see the appeal. On some level, it seems like having sex with the whole world, with the earth and the sky and the water.
“Was that some sort of pagan ritual?” Eames asks Arthur as they’re getting dressed, because Eames is concerned about his ridiculous thoughts about skinny dipping.
“No,” Arthur says, looking at Eames. “But if you’d like to go on a vision quest or do peyote, I could arrange that.”
Eames is, once again, not entirely sure who Arthur is.
“I go to art school,” Arthur adds.
Eames stays in his sleeping bag that night, be he hardly sleeps at all, and instead listens to the night noises outside the tent, and wonders what it’s like to be attacked by a bear.
They pack up the tent and load up the car, return to the highway, and they’re going again.
“We’re going to make it all the way to Minnesota today,” Arthur says. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“Okay,” Eames says. Arthur is driving so Eames gets the atlas out of the door, and looks at the map.
“As my companion on this journey,” Arthur says. “Are you prepared to push the limits of your long-distance driving abilities so we can reach Minneapolis by day’s end?”
“Only if we can stay in a hotel this time,” Eames says. With two beds, he thinks.
“Eames, if we make it to Minneapolis you can have whatever you want. We will be crossing the boringlands of North Dakota. This is very serious.”
“We’re on 94, right?” Eames asks, looking at the map.
“Yes. See that sign? The one shaped like a shield, that says 94?” Arthur points at the road as he’s driving.
“So we’re going through Fargo?” Eames says.
“Yes, but it’s not like the movie. It is no fun at all,” Arthur says. “And if you think it is fun, any pleasure you derive you will sorely regret when we drive through northern Ohio.”
“Arthur, I am wondering if you have some issues with repressed rage.”
“I-90 through northern Ohio is the most boring stretch of road in the universe. It’s where good things go to die.”
“I’m sure you’re right, darling,” Eames says.
Arthur looks at him sharply. “What?”
“What?” Eames asks.
“Did you just call me ‘darling’?”
Eames replays their conversation in his head.
“I suppose I did. Sorry, mate.”
“No, it’s nothing,” Arthur says, but when silence falls it feels awkward, and Eames looks out the window but keeps one eye on Arthur.
“Tell me something,” Arthur says, when they’re about an hour in. The awkwardness has dissolved rather than compounded, and Eames is surprised to find he wants to have something to tell Arthur.
“I called Yusuf this morning,” Eames says.
“Yusuf?” Arthur asks.
“He plays my companion, on the show. He’s my best friend.”
“Oh,” Arthur looks thoughtful. “Ariadne’s my best friend, I think. Do you have siblings?”
“Only child,” Eames said. “Well, I do have a half-brother, but he’s seven.”
“Younger wife?” Arthur asks, one eyebrow raised.
“Yes,” Eames says. “She’s not bad, though. Not a trophy wife or anything, just...younger. Older than me, at least.”
They stop at a greasy spoon for lunch. Arthur turns out to be a vegetarian, and the waitress gives him the stink-eye when he interrogates her about the grease used to cook their french fries, but the milkshakes are probably the best things ever, disgruntled waitress or no. If she spit in them, Eames can’t taste it.
“Could you taste spit in your shake?” he asks Arthur when they leave.
“No,” Arthur says. “Ugh, why’d you suggest that? Unsanitary.”
“Good milkshakes, though,” Eames observes.
They make it to Minneapolis, that night, and Eames gets them a motel on the outskirts. Eames is still treated to a view of Arthur’s chest, but it’s from across the room, and--this is better.
If that’s the case, Eames isn’t sure why he has a harder time falling asleep.
He has an erection when he wakes up, but he deals with it in the bathroom, biting his lip to keep silent. When Arthur asks him about the cut, and Eames says he must’ve bit his lip in his sleep.
Arthur looks at his mouth longer than strictly necessary, but Eames is pretty sure it’s not a thing.
“Chicago!” Arthur says this morning when they get on the highway. “And we should get there with plenty of time to walk around.”
When they arrive, Eames insists that they stay at one of the big hotels where the river intersects the lake, and Arthur puts up minimal fight.
(It goes like this:
“I don’t need you to pay for all this.”
“I want to.”
“I can chip in.”
“I’m a T.V. star, Arthur. You’re an architecture student, and while I’m sure you’ll be devastatingly wealthy one day, that day is not today.”)
“You know what we should do?” Arthur says once they’re in their room.
“No,” Eames says. Something about Arthur’s tone makes him suspicious.
“Jazz club,” Arthur says with great certainty.
“On Monday night?”
“I’m sure somewhere has something.”
“And I’m sure I haven’t got anything to wear,” Eames says, and Arthur raises an eyebrow.
“Shit excuse, Eames. We’re on the fucking Magnificent Mile.”
“And you’ve got something to wear?” Eames asked. “Packed in that car of yours?”
“Of course,” Arthur says.
Eames is pretty certain this is a terrible idea, but Arthur goes down to talk to the concierge.
“Okay,” he says when he returns with a suit bag. “There are shows we can go to, and there’s a Gucci down the street.”
“Gucci?” Eames says. Arthur shrugs.
“You’re the T.V. star, remember? Now go into the bathroom and put on something we can stuff in a bag once you get your suit.”
Eames is not sure why he’s compelled to do everything Arthur says, but he grabs jeans and a t-shirt, and goes into the bathroom.
When he comes out, Arthur is on the phone with his back to Eames.
Eames is pretty sure he should not feel the way he does about Arthur’s back.
“No, Ariadne, he’s not,” Arthur is saying. “I’m sure.”
“Not what?” Eames asks, and when Arthur turns around Eames’ mouth goes dry. Because if he looked delicious dressed like a college student, he looks better now.
“Going to kill me,” Arthur says after a pause. “And if you were, Ariadne knows who you are, so.”
Eames is pretty sure this is a lie, but he runs with it.
“Maybe I just look like Howard Eames, the actor who plays the lead on a popular British sci-fi series, when in fact I am a killer trying to frame him.”
“That would be unfortunate,” Arthur says, and frowns. “Now come on, let’s go.”
“I’m not sure if I’m fit to be seen with you,” Eames says.
“Trust me, you’re fit,” Arthur says, looking him up and down and then sweeping out of the room.
If Eames didn’t know better, he would be pretty sure that was a double entendre. He tries not to read too much into it.
It’s slightly harder not to read too much into it after Arthur gets him in a suit. When he comes out of the dressing room, Arthur’s eyes darken noticably.
“Buy it,” he says, so Eames does.
“It might need to be tailored,” Arthur says curtly after they leave, not looking at him. “But it’ll do for now.”
Eames is not sure what to make of Arthur, still.
He does find he likes jazz more than he thought, but mostly because of the look on Arthur’s face, and the way he shushes anyone who tries to talk to him and isn’t Eames.
Eames falls asleep easily that night, but only because it’s late.
They discuss it, the next morning, and decide they’ll spend one more day in Chicago and then move on to New York, where they’ll spend one night camping (because Arthur drives a hard bargain) and then they can stay in New York City, in a hotel of Eames’ choosing, until Eames flies out and Arthur leaves for Rhode Island (because Eames also knows how to bargain).
Eames calls Yusuf right then, and a plane ticket is booked from Laguardia to Heathrow, leaving Friday.
“Will you be able to leave your new boy toy?” Yusuf asks.
“Don’t call him that,” Eames hisses, because Arthur is across the room.
“So does mean he’s your boyfriend?” Yusuf says. “Or are you still not getting any?”
“The latter,” Eames replies, keeping one eye on Arthur.
“Eames,” Yusuf says. “I know you may not realize this, but I’m pretty sure he’s not putting up with you for your charming personality.”
“I have a charming personality,” Eames says.
“You have a charming personality when you’re acting. Right now, less so.”
“You never have a charming personlity,” Eames says. “I think my phone is running out of battery.”
He hangs up.
“That’s how you talk to your best friend?” Arthur asks from across the room, where he’s lying on his bed looking at the ceiling.
“It’s not polite to listen to other people’s telephone conversations,” Eames tells him.
“What? You interrupted mine, last night.”
“I’m not a polite person,” Eames says, and lies back on his own bed. “But I suspect you are.”
“We should go somewhere,” Arthur says. “We’re in Chicago. There are things to do here.”
“It’s hot out, and in the summer the streets smell like steaming urine,” Eames says.
“Not Chicago’s,” Arthur replies. “Chicago streets smell like sunshine and daisies.”
“Let’s watch T.V.,” Eames says. So they do. Stupid things; reality shows, soaps. Somehow it’s funny, fun, until they get to BBC America and Eames’ face is on the screen.
Eames hates seeing himself act. The single worst thing about television, as opposed to stage, is all the recordings, the way they constantly rise up to taunt him. He doesn’t want to look like that, or be like that. He is not that person.
He is that person, on the screen, running around the TARDIS pulling levers, but he doesn’t want to be, because that person is the Doctor but it is also Eames, replicated a thousand times, everywhere.
“Turn it off,” Eames says, but Arthur laughs.
“No, seriously, turn it off,” Eames repeats, and he can feel his voice getting low and hard.
Arthur looks at him.
“I think we should go outside,” Arthur says.
So they do. Chicago smells like steaming shit, as is to be expected, but the Art Institute is nice. They walk through and look at the paintings, the famous pointillism one, American Gothic, Nighthawks. There are other things, too, photography and miniature rooms buried in the basement, folk art, Asian sculpture.
Arthur is quiet, and Eames can think. There’s a point in museums where his mind always turns to mush, like he’s taken too much in and can’t process it any longer. But today he wants to reach that point, to feel his brains fall out his ears, because if there’s nothing in his head make something that’s there will make sense.
There’s Arthur, for one, Arthur who is his travelling companion and beautiful and possibly probably straight, and who, beyond that, Eames might actually like, as a human being, for his weird easiness.
But it’s not just that, because there’s also Eames. He’d allowed Arthur and thoughts of Arthur to fill up all the empty hours in the car. He had allowed the simple vastness of the landscape, too, to enter his mind and push out all else. But he had ignored the things he was running from; fame, but more than fame, himself.
It was such a pathetic cliche. But unhappiness ran through him somewhere deep inside, and it seemed like the best he could do was to distract himself from it. Seeing himself on the television just peeled back the layers, because there he was. He was playing the Doctor, but he was deeply unhappy.
He could remember filming that episode, and going back to his apartment and just sleeping for awhile. That was his life.
He was sure Yusuf could put things in perspective, because that’s what Yusuf did, but Eames--it was complicated.
They’re looking at The Old Guitarist, that Pablo Picasso painting of a man, blue and haggard and bent over a guitar.
“I’m sorry,” Eames says to Arthur.
“It’s okay,” Arthur says.
“I’m not happy,” Eames says, though he knows he’s already told Arthur this.
“I know,” Arthur replies.
“Are you?” Eames asks.
“Sometimes,” Arthur says.
They keep looking at the painting. This is okay, Eames thinks. This is enough.
“What are you going to do when you get back to England?” Arthur asks him in the car the next morning. Eames is driving, but he’s been watching Arthur out of the corner of his eye.
“What I usually do,” Eames says.
“Be unhappy?” Arthur frowns.
“I’ll figure it out eventually,” Eames says.
When they drive through Gary, Indiana, Arthur sings the song from “The Music Man” and points out the billboard for a strip club named Industrial Strip by the side of the road.
“Gary may smell like ass,” Arthur says, “but it’s the last interesting thing you’ll see for awhile.”
He’s pretty much right. The stop at a rest area in Ohio for McDonald’s, but that’s about it.
They’re camping in the Catskills, this time, and Eames can see what Arthur means about the mountains here being different. They seem older, stooped and weary instead of proud and straight, gentle bumps like the ridges of some great beast’s backbone.
Their bowed backs also look strong, and Eames thinks he might like them.
It’s warm enough out, and Eames convinces Arthur to ditch the tent and just sleep on the wood platform where they’re supposed to pitch it. They can see the bright burn of New York City’s lights on the horizon, but the stars are still there. It’s nice.
When Eames wakes up there’s dew on his face and he’s still in his sleeping bag, but he and Arthur are spooning.
He twists around, and Arthur is awake, looking bleary but amused.
“I’d’ve thought you’d be the big spoon,” Arthur says.
When they get to the city, Eames manages to get them in at the Plaza because he knows Saito and Saito knows someone. And by “someone” Eames means “everyone.”
Arthur just looks vaguely bemused when they get up to their room.
“Is it a British thing, wanting to stay someplace swank?” he asks. “Because I would’ve been perfectly happy at a motel.”
“That’s just because you wouldn’t have been able to get in here,” Eames replies, moving around the room and waving his arms. “Look, Central Park! Out the window!”
“Let’s go to Central Park,” Arthur says. “That’s better than seeing it.”
“Because you can befriend the bums?” Eames asks, and Arthur laughs.
“No,” he says. “Because from here you can’t see the trees for the forest.”
It’s there, in Central Park, that Eames gets recognized. He’s kind of surprised it didn’t happen earlier, actually.
“Doctor!” someone calls from behind. “Howard Eames!”
Eames turns around, even though he knows he shouldn’t. It’s a girl, in jeans and a t-shirt with a satchel slung across her chest. She looks about like any other girl, and she’s grinning broadly.
“I thought so! I love Doctor Who. Could I get you to sign something?” she’s already digging through her bag, and comes up with a moleskine and a pen. “My name’s Meg.”
“Okay, Meg,” Eames says, and plasters a smile on his face. “Always lovely to meet a fan. Now should I make this out to you, or someone else?”
“Me,” she says, and then she’s looking at Arhur. “So, is this, like, your boyfriend?”
So, not just a fan, but a fan who reads the gossip blogs.
Arthur looks at Eames and Eames looks back at him, and he can see Arthur’s eyes go incrementally wider, but he can’t read the expression in them.
“No,” Eames says very gently, because Arthur doesn’t look about to say anything. The girl looks between them, but her smile is still bright, and so apparently she can’t feel the rising of a tide of awkwardness around them.
Eames scrawls his name, and her name, and “Best wishes” or some shit, and gives her back the notebook. He manages to retain his smile and politeness until she walks away, and then he turns to Arthur.
“I’m gay,” Eames says. He’s pretty sure this shouldn’t impact Arthur’s life at all, because he lives so easily in his body and so the casual nudity shouldn’t matter whether or not Eames could be attracted to him. But something in Arthur’s face suggests it matters.
“Oh,” Arthur says, and looks at his own feet, and then Eames’ feet.
“Is that okay?” Eames asks, trying to be gentle. He wants more to be gentle now than he ever has before, because suddenly Arthur seems like he might dissolve or disappear, like the life that he had been brimful with before is sinking down.
“Yeah,” Arthur says. “Yeah, it’s fine. Ariadne thought you were. It’s just--”
And Eames looks at Arthur’s face, and he can see something else there, and he thinks he recognizes it, because he’s good at reading people when he isn’t operating under ridiculous assumptions.
“Arthur,” he says, stepping closer and talking faster. “Arthur. I may be very wrong here--please forgive me if I’m very wrong--”
“Yes,” Arthur says, before all the words are out of his mouth.
Eames kisses him, and Arthur responds in an instant, and it’s like joy is fucking flowing out of him and into Eames, like Eames is a fucking joy vampire, only Eames is pretty sure there will never be any lack of joy, that Arthur is experiencing no deficit. Their mouths come apart and their foreheads bump together, and Arthur’s hands are on Eames’ back and Eames’ hands are on Arthur’s, and it feels complete.
“This whole time?” Eames asks.
“This whole time,” Arthur says, and Eames can feel the words puff across his face.
“So this isn’t our first date, is it?” Eames says.
“No,” Arthur replies.
“Because I want to fuck you in the Plaza,” Eames tells him.
“Okay,” says Arthur.
There are so many things Eames should be thinking about right now, about Arthur in Rhode Island, about his own flight home and his tendency to break himself and other men. But this is Arthur, Arthur’s fingers tangled in his, Arthur who likes him in some inexplicable way that seems to have nothing to do with the Doctor and who Eames might be, and everything to do with who Eames is.
The elevator is empty, but they press against each other anyway, or maybe because it is, Arthur’s hips aligned against Eames’ in the way that, if he’s honest, Eames has wanted ever since that first day in Starbucks, when Arthur had leaned against the counter blowing on his stupid foamy drink, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.
“You,” Eames says. “You’ve been trying to seduce me since the beginning.”
“No,” Arthur says. “But I’m glad it worked.”
Arthur nuzzles Eames’ neck, and somewhere around floor 12 that turns into sucking, and when the elevator doors open they barely manage to stumble out, and they’re rushing down the hallway past housekeeping carts, Eames’ arm around Arthur’s waist, and they’re fumbling to open the door, and then they’re tripping over clothes and falling into bed.
Eames would try to overthink this, but it pretty much seems exactly right, and Arthur’s long limbs are laid bare on a bed with ostentatious gold embellishments on the headboard, so, really, now is not the time.
Arthur will come to England, after he finishes school. Eames will wait, and sometimes flounder, and sometimes pace his apartment late at night wondering if this was a terrible idea. There will be inordinate amounts of phone sex and jacking off in the shower.
When Arthur gets there, only the paparazzi will keep Eames from doing it with him in the airport bathroom. When Eames brings Arthur home, he won’t be able to help feeling like they’ve both arrived, finally, at a destination entirely new.
eames hates his life, gets drunk, and ends up stateside. then there is a road trip. written for this prompt.
r . 8493 words
When Eames wakes up, he is sitting upright, his forehead lolling against a miniscule window. His head is pounding.
The headache suggests a hangover. The window suggests an airplane. The lights are dim, and the woman next to him is asleep. He’s not even sure where he’s going.
Memories begin to trickle in slowly, and then they begin to flood: quiz night at the pub. Their team winning, largely on Yusuf’s merit. A round of drinks and then another round of drinks. Several more rounds of drinks. Another pub, when the one with the quiz night kicks them out. Something that seems to have been a strip club on amateur night, although Eames was so drunk by then he can’t entirely trust his memory.
And then back to his apartment. And then Heathrow. Eames isn’t sure why anyone would let him buy a ticket, inebriated as he surely was, but--ah yes, there it is, rising up in his memory: he signed the woman behind the desk’s breast. Fame is so lovely.
It occurs to Eames, that since it was quiz night at the pub, it must be somewhere between Tuesday and Wednesday, and he still isn’t entirely sure where he’s going. He flags over a flight attendant, and she peers down at him.
“Where,” Eames whispers. “Is this plane going?”
“Houston,” she says without batting an eye, which suggests that Eames was lewd and drunk when he boarded, the sort of person who would be on a plane but uncertain of its destination.
“How long does that take?” Eames asks.
“We’ll be landing in Houston in three hours, sir,” the flight attendant says, and her accent is curt and American. “You can check our progress on the seatback console.”
After the flight attendant leaves, it occurs to Eames that he must have a boarding pass somewhere, and he fishes his bag out from under the seat.
Houston is just a stopover, it turns out, because there’s another boarding pass that will take him to Seattle. Apparently his drunk self has an overwhelming urge to see the Space Needle, or get coffee at the original Starbucks, or something. There is no accounting for drunk Eames’ taste.
Eames goes back to sleep, because he can’t think about this right now.
When he wakes, daylight is piercing his eyelids, and the captain has turned on the seatbelt sign. Eames can taste the sleep and the booze on his breath, and he knows his drunk self failed to pack a toothbrush, because that’s the way these things go.
As soon as they’re off the plane, Eames fishes his mobile (thank god it’s a satellite) out of his pocket and calls Yusuf. He has 213 missed calls, which is more than he thought were possible.
He’s not sure what time it is in England right now; probably the evening, actually, judging by the fact that his body seems to want to sleep yet again.
Yusuf picks up on the first ring; practically before the first ring.
“Fuck, Eames, where are you?”
“Houston,” Eames says, squinting. “It’s sunny.”
“Eames,” Yusuf says. “Please tell me this is a joke, and you just overslept by a lot, or were too hungover to come in or something, which is pretty unprofessional, but not as unprofessional as flying to Houston in the middle of the night.”
“No,” Eames says. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I flew to Houston. There’s a man in cowboy boots here.”
“Fuck,” Yusuf says again, but this time he drags it out over several more syllables. “I knew I shouldn’t have let your unhappy ass drink that much.”
“Yeah, I guess not.”
“When’s the soonest you can get back?” Yusuf asks, finally.
“I’m not sure, actually,” Eames says. “I seem to have booked a flight to Seattle as well.”
Eames can hear Yusuf groaning into the phone.
“Eames, don’t go to Seattle. For the sake of all that’s good and holy, don’t go to Seattle.”
“You don’t really need me on set right now, do you?” Eames asks.
“You’re the Doctor, Eames. We need you on set.”
“No,” Eames says. “You just think you do. All my bits are wrapped up. I’m brilliant.”
“Eames,” Yusuf says, and his tone is getting dangerous.
“Tell everyone I’ll be back in ten days,” Eames says, because ten days seems like enough. He hangs up.
Yusuf calls him back immediately, of course, but Eames turns the mobile off and puts it back in his pocket, then goes to find the gate for his next flight. Which wasn’t how Eames had expected things to go at all. When Eames had called Yusuf, he’d planned to find the first flight from Houston back to Heathrow and catch it, and then he’d be back on set in a day or two, and no one would fire him or question his loyalty to his job.
This is a terrible idea. But they are almost done with filming for the season, and his life may be okay as long as Eames is the Doctor, but as soon as he isn’t it all goes to shit. Because Eames is Eames, and not the Doctor, and it may make him a pathetic whiny ungrateful bitch to complain about this, but he doesn’t actually like the lived reality of his life. He spends a lot of time inside his flat, looking at walls, and some days he doesn’t leave at all, because his body feels so heavy around him, because if he does outside people will expect him to be some charming combination of Eames and the Doctor.
Now, suddenly, he has momentum. And it turns out he’s not about to give it up.
Momentum or no, he sleeps all the way to Seattle.
He turns on his phone when he gets there, and the missed call count has gone up, and he has a new text from Yusuf: moffat sez whatevs, but smith would never have pulled this shit.
Eames texts back: f.u. And then, after a moment: thnx, c u in 10 my good companion. Then he turns off his phone again, hefts his carry-on over his shoulder, and walks out of the airport.
He buys a toothbrush first, then gets a taxi to take him to the original Starbucks.
When Eames gets in the door he remembers he hates Starbucks, but he wants to use the bathroom to brush his teeth, and even a bad coffee sounds really good right now, so he orders a cup of coffee from the kid behind the counter.
He orders coffee, black, the cheapest on the menu, but before he can stalk off somewhere to wait, the kid looks up at him, and does something like a double-take, only the change in his face is so incremental Eames wouldn’t have noticed, if he wasn’t good at reading faces and also looking at this kids’ face.
He’s probably not a kid, actually. He’s probably in his early twenties, and Eames is only twenty-nine, but the kid’s face is open like a kid’s. He’s cute, really, dark hair and squinting, smiling eyes.
“You’re the Doctor,” says the kid.
“No I’m not,” Eames says, and considers making a crack about Americans thinking all British people looking alike. But the kid looks so hopeful, so Eames just adds, “But I play him on T.V.”
The kid breaks into a grin, and dimples appear in his cheeks.
“I knew it! My little sis loves Doctor Who. Can I get your autograph?”
“For your sister?” Eames asks, and he can’t help it if he’s skeptical. He looks at the kid’s name tag, which says ARTHUR, only upside down. Arthur fishes around in his pocket, and hands him a pen and a napkin.
“Oh, you don’t have to believe me, just make it out to Ariadne. That’s A-R-I-A-D-N-E. She’ll be so stoked.”
For some reason, Eames just takes the things and scribbles that down, doodles a little police box for good measure. He hates autographs. Arthur is beaming.
“She actually liked Matt Smith better, but she’s warming up to you, and she thinks the new companion is great.”
Eames looks at him, and hands the napkin back. “I’ll be sure to let Yusuf know,” he says, and can’t quite hide his laugh. “Your name badge is on upside down, Arthur.”
Arthur frowns, and looks down at his apron. He’s adjusting the pin when Eames goes to sit down, and then he puts the napkin in his pocket and ducks off to the back. A few minutes later he reappears at the other end of the bar with a ceramic mug. Eames goes up to get it, but Arthur withholds.
“Actually, this isn’t your order.”
Eames looks around the cafe. It’s an odd hour on a Wednesday evening, and there’s one other filled table, a touristy looking group with cups in front of them.
“It’s mine,” Arthur says quickly, and produces another mug. “Yours is here. I tweaked it a bit.”
Eames looks at him and Arthur shrugs.
“People only order black coffee here when they want to use the bathroom,” he says. “And our stuff isn’t that good straight. I just made you a latte.”
Eames looks at the mug. Arthur’s done that thing that baristas do, where they make a little leaf in the froth, and actually a latte sounds just about spot on.
“Thanks,” he says, and Arthur settles his hips against the counter behind him and brings his own mug to his lips, alternately blowing and sipping.
“What’re you having?” Eames asks, because he finds he doesn’t want to sit down just yet.
“London fog,” Arthur says, and his lips quirk upwards at the corners. “Earl grey with steamed milk and sugar, basically.”
“Want to sit with me?” Eames asks, and is surprised by himself.
Arthur looks at the door, and shrugs. “Sure.”
So they bring their cups over to Eames’ table, and sit down facing one another, Arthur is still blowing on his tea before every sip, and Eames finds himself watching his mouth.
“I burn my tongue a lot,” Arthur says. “The only thing that can fix it is sucking on a spoonful of honey because it was cutting into profits, but my boss said I had to stop eating all the honey, so I’m trying not to burn my tongue.”
This strikes Eames as a bizarre and slightly erotic confession, though Arthur doesn’t seem to think so--but judging from their interactions thus far, Arthur seems to be remarkably hard to ruffle.
“You could wait,” Eames says.
“I could,” says Arthur. “But I don’t want to.”
They both consider this for a moment.
Arthur breaks the silence first.
“So, what brings you to Seattle?”
“I’m not sure, actually,” Eames says. “I just wound up here.”
“That kind of happened to me, too,” Arthur says, and then they’re quiet again. The bell rings on the door, and Arthur goes to help the customers, and when he walks away Eames looks at the ties of the green apron across his back.
Arthur waves, when Eames leaves, and Eames goes to find a hotel so he can sleep some more.
When he wakes up, Eames is naked and sprawled out on his hotel mattress, and he feels refreshed for the first time in a long time. He puts on yesterday’s rumpled airplane clothes.
He goes to the Space Needle, but it’s not significantly better than the London Eye, is actually more boring, because it’s not a ferris wheel. He has nine more days left, and apparently he’s already run out of things to do. Largely because he doesn’t know shit about Seattle. But he can’t lose his momentum, so he goes back to Starbucks. Some girl is behind the counter, and a blond is working the espresso machine in the back.
“Excuse me,” he says. “Someone named Arthur works here?”
“Yeah?” she says, snapping her gum and looking at him expectantly.
“Is he working today?”
“Nah, he was in this morning,” she says. “I think he’s leaving town today, actually.”
“Could you give me his number?” Eames asks, before he can think about what a terrible idea this is.
The girl pauses and cranes her neck over the counter, then looks Eames up and down. This takes a minute, and she actually nods when she’s done.
“Sure,” she says, and goes to talk to the blond, who turns to look at him.
The blond comes over, squinting menacingly at Eames.
“You want Arthur’s number?” he asks.
“Yes,” Eames says. “Sir.”
“And Arthur won’t mind you having his number?”
“If he does, I won’t call him,” Eames says. The blond looks skeptical, then pulls out his own phone, dialing quickly.
“Arthur,” he says after a few minutes. “There’s someone here--” he looks at Eames.
“Eames.”
“Someone here named Eames who wants your number.”
There is a pause, and the blond name nods a couple times, then flips his phone shut. He writes something down on a napkin and hands it to Eames.
“If you’re a dick, I will take your dick,” he says, and goes back to the espresso machine.
Eames calls the number. Arthur picks up on the first ring.
“Hey Doctor,” he says, and Eames suddenly realizes he doesn’t know what to say.
“I have eight more days here and I’ve run out of things to do,” Eames says, after a pause.
“Well,” says Arthur. “I’m leaving for Rhode Island today.”
“Oh,” says Eames, because he’d kind of hoped Arthur would be his tour guide. “Well, I guess you’re packing, so I won’t bother you.”
“You could come with. If you haven’t booked a ticket back yet.”
“I haven’t,” Eames says.
“You’ll come with, then,” Arthur says. “I could use a second driver, if you can manage to stay on the right side of the road.”
So Arthur gives Eames an address, and Eames hails a taxi. It’s so simple and clear, and Eames isn’t sure how this happened. There’s no reason for Arthur to trust him. There’s no reason for any of this to be happening, but it is.
Arthur lives in a house on the edge of the city, and when Eames arrives he’s sprawled out on the lawn in shorts, a t-shirt, flip-flops, talking to a dark-haired girl dressed almost identically. When the taxi pulls up, Arthur gets to his feet and offers a hand to the girl, and then they’re both there, greeting Eames.
“Hey,” Arthur says easily, and then the girl, who must be Ariadne, sort of gapes at him.
“I love Doctor Who,” she says.
“You must be Ariadne,” Eames says. She looks to be in her late teens, and she’s wearing a Star Trek t-shirt, apparently unironically. “Arthur says you liked Matt Smith.”
“Yes, but now I’ve met you so maybe the twelfth doctor isn’t so bad,” Ariadne shrugs, and suddenly she is just like her brother--open, yet simultaneously indifferent.
“Not bad for a ten-second meeting. But I’ll try to get Matt to sign something for you, if I run into him.”
“We need to get going,” Arthur interjects. “If we’re going to make it to Spokane tonight.”
They all head towards the house, and Eames sees an old, boxy Volvo parked in the driveway, coloured a dusty blue.
“Not quite a police box, but it’ll do,” Arthur says, when he sees him looking.
“Hey,” Ariadne says. “Can you give me any spoilers? Future episode plotlines?”
“Sorry, darling,” Eames says. “That’s classified.”
“Damnit,” Ariadne says. “I like Matt Smith better, again.”
“Low blow, sis,” Arthur says, and opens the front door of the house.
There’s food in the kitchen: a giant ziploc bag full of what Arthur and Ariadne call gorp, which turns out to be a mixture of peanuts, raisins, and m&ms; a few loaves of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly; an opaque grocery bag containing other mysterious victuals. Arthur gives half of this to Eames, and they load it up in the car; then go back inside, where Ariadne has made up egg salad sandwiches for them, with milk.
“Where are your parents?” Eames asks, because there are pictures on the walls of all four of them, slender and dark-eyed, and there’s something strangely domestic about Arthur and Ariadne, about sitting at a granite counter eating egg salad sandwiches with milk, that seems like it calls for parents if they aren’t the parents themselves.
“Work,” Ariadne says through a mouthful.
“They said good-bye this morning,” Arthur adds.
“Oh,” Eames looks between them, and it seems like there’s something unsaid, but he doesn’t try to push it. “So, Spokane,” he says instead.
“Spokane,” says Arthur, stuffing the last of his sandwich into his mouth. Ariadne makes a disgusted face, then somehow manages to stuff more sandwich in her mouth, and then she lifts her milk in a toast. Arthur taps his glass to hers, and they both wash it down.
Eames looks at them.
“Sorry,” Ariadne says. “It’s our sibling rivalry.”
“You have a sibling rivalry about who can fit the most food in your mouth?”
“Yeah,” Ariadne says, and Arthur is nodding. “It embarrasses our parents, too.”
Eames is trying not to think about blowjobs, right now, but it’s hard.
“Anyway,” Arthur says. “Lunch is over, let’s go.”
Arthur loads Eames up with half the food, and grabs a leather satchel from off the staircase, and then they’re outside, and Arthur kisses Ariadne on the cheek and hugs her tight, and Eames gives her a sort of awkward one-armed hug because apparently they hug in this family, and adopt people quickly, even people who are television stars in foreign countries. Ariadne is waving and shouting as they pull out of the driveway, and she chases the car to the end of the block, laughing. Arthur’s laughing, too.
It’s so joyful Eames thinks he might cry.
“On the road again,” Arthur sings tunelessly when they merge onto the highway. “Just can’t--WAIT--to be on the road again.”
He drums on the steering wheel, too, and it strikes Eames that this is probably what he would do if Eames weren’t here at all. So Eames settles back into his seat with its uncomfortable headrest, turns his head towards the window, and watches the land roll past, because that’s what he would do if Arthur weren’t here at all.
“Where are we going?” he asks Arthur, when they pass the city limits.
“Spokane,” Arthur says. “Then some other places. Then Rhode Island. I have a road atlas somewhere.”
“What’s in Rhode Island?” Eames asks.
“Oh--sorry. College. I’m going back to college. It’ll be my senior year.”
“What are you studying?”
“Architecture.”
Eames nods, and they both fall silent. It’s strange, because normally silences like this make Eames feel like he should fill them up to overflowing, but with Arthur he just sits there in the passenger seat, and occasionally they discuss radio channel selection, and it’s alright.
“Did you go to college?” Arthur asks, continuing their conversation after it’s been dead an hour.
“Yeah. Studied theatre,” Eames says.
“Did you like stage better than television?”
People ask that a lot, but this time Eames pauses and thinks about it.
“They’re different,” he says, which is what he usually says. But the back of his mind is still churning, because it occurs to him that he did like stage better than television, he does. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time.
“I’ve done some set design,” is all Arthur says.
“Yeah?” Eames asks.
“Yeah.”
Eames goes back to looking out the window, but he doesn’t see the landscape whipping by any more. Instead, he thinks about not liking television, and he tries to pinpoint why. He thinks it has something to do with fame, the way he is no longer just the character he plays, but now he must also play himself in public.
Which is maybe what he likes here, that no one recognizes him. No one expects him to be Eames, who plays the Doctor. Except Arthur, but, well. He may recognize Eames, but he doesn’t seem to expect anything for it.
It’s not dark yet, when they get to Spokane. They’re staying in a flat that apparently belongs to a college friend of Arthur’s who is currently out of town.
“I’ve a tent, for the other nights,” Arthur says, groping under the doormat for a key to unlock the door.
“I have money,” Eames says, looking at him, and Arthur laughs.
“Yeah, but camping’s nice.”
Eames disagrees, but for some reason he chooses not to voice it. It occurs to Eames that he doesn’t have a sleeping bag, and he does say that.
“I brought a spare,” Arthur says, and Eames doesn’t respond to that, because there’s something lovely about being taken care, but saying so seems maudlin.
“Can we go to a store?” he says instead. “My drunk self packed no clothes.”
“Your drunk self?” Arthur asks, raising an eyebrow. “Sometime you’ll have to explain how you got here.”
“What do they teach you in the schools here? When a man loves a woman very, very much...”
Arthur laughs. “Weak joke, Eames. But I’m sure we can find you something.”
They end up wandering Spokane, weaving in and out of stores. In the first shop, Arthur tells Eames he has terrible taste and then proceeds to treat him like a paper doll. In the second, Arthur makes him buy three t-shirts Eames is pretty sure are a size too small. In the third, jeans with holes in them and a plaid button-down. Eames spends most of the time watching Arthur's eyes roam his body assessingly, wondering if he's gay or just very serious about properly fitted clothing. Because this is Arthur, it could really go either way, though Eames settles on the latter after seeing Arthur eying up a shop girl in the fourth stop.
Maybe it’s because Eames is distracted, or because Arthur is excessively complimentary, but he ends up buying far more clothes than he needs for the next eight days. Also, a battered suitcase from a resale shop, to keep them in.
When they get back to the flat, they watch TV until it’s time to sleep, when it becomes apparent that there’s only one bed, which Arthur makes Eames take. Maybe it’s because he just spent several hours doing everything Arthur said, but Eames doesn’t fight it.
“How old are you?” Eames asks the next morning when they’re in the car eating McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches.
“Twenty-one,” Arthur says. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine,” Eames says. “I shouldn’t let you boss me around so much. When I was eighteen, you were ten.”
“I’m an old soul,” Arthur replies, and it should sound strange, but it doesn’t. It sounds about right. “Tell me something, Eames.”
“What?”
“Anything,” says Arthur.
Eames sits in silence for a bit, looking at the highway in front of them.
“I got drunk on Tuesday night and flew to Seattle,” he says.
“I’d guessed as much.”
“I’m not happy,” Eames says.
“I’d guessed that, too.”
“Then why do I need to tell you?”
“Because,” Arthur says, then adds. “My parents moved to Seattle after I left for college.”
“Oh,” Eames says, and Arthur fiddles with something in the door, and puts in a CD, and things are quiet again, otherwise.
After lunch, they switch, and Eames drives. The car is manual, and it’s weird to shift with his right hand, but he gets used to it eventually. After stalling twice. Arthur just laughs, and seems unconcerned.
“The mountains here are strange,” Eames comments when they cross the Great Divide, because they are. They rise out of pancake flatness, sharp and jagged at their peaks.
“They’re different, back east,” Arthur offers. “Softer.”
“Is that where you’re from?” Eames asks.
“Yeah,” Arthur says, and looks out the window.
“Tell me something, Arthur,” Eames says.
“I miss it,” Arthur says.
“But we’re going back,” Eames says, and the words are out before he can catch the ‘we’re’ and change it to ‘you’re’. Arthur shrugs.
“I’m from New Hampshire, not Rhode Island.”
“Oh,” Eames says. “America is very big, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Arthur says, nodding. “It is. Things are closer together in New England, though.”
Eames laughs a little, at New England, even though he was aware they called part of this country that.
They cross the Continental Divide.
“Now we’re going with the water, not against it,” Arthur points out. Eames nods.
Arthur gives him directions off the highway, and they wind through a series of increasingly slender roads until they reach the place where they’ll camp that night and the next, in some National Forest adjacent to Yellowstone.
“I would try to take you to Yellowstone,” Arthur says. “But this is way cheaper.”
“It’s nice,” Eames says, looking around. It is--there are trees, and mountains, and Arthur is pitching the tent in a small clearing.
Eames sits on the picnic table.
“Want to make peanut butter jelly sandwiches?” Arthur asks, and so Eames gets the bread from the car, and makes himself and sandwich with just jelly and one with both for Arthur.
“Ta-da,” Arthur says, from over by the tent.
“That fits two people?” Eames asks.
“It’s a three person tent, actually,” Arthur shrugs.
“Three children, I assume,” Eames says.
“I share it with Ariadne all the time,” Arthur replies.
Eames resists pointing out that Ariadne is tiny. And also, Arthur’s sister.
They eat their sandwiches, and then Arthur gets a deck of cards from the car and they play war. Which is really is the stupidest game, and doesn’t really keep Eames from pondering the logistics of folding both their bodies into the small tent.
When night falls, they walk with a flashlight to the bathrooms, then back to their site. Arthur unzips the tent and crawls in, and Eames follows him, and finds the sleeping bags all laid out, one blue and one red.
“You get blue,” says Arthur, and begins to strip, which was a component of this experience Eames had not anticipated. Arthur looks at him askance, and Eames peels off his clothes as well, and buries himself in the blue sleeping bag. He rolls over so is back is to Arthur, and it’s too warm in the sleeping bag, and he can hear Arthur breathing behind him, and it’s hard to sleep.
When he wakes up, he is out of the sleeping bag, and his arm is thrown across Arthur’s waist, and their legs are tangled together.
It’s nice, but it can’t last. Eames disentangles himself, and Arthur rolls over and blinks up at him.
“Good morning,” Arthur says. His hair is mussed and his eyes are large and dark with sleep, and for the first time Eames thinks going along with this--all of it, the road trip, the camping, the casual camaraderie--might be a bad idea.
“Good morning,” Eames replies. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
Morning at the campground is nice--there are birds singing, and the air is clear and fresh. There’s a brook, bright a burbling, and with the mountains behind it’s embarrassingly idyllic. Eames is pretty sure he has no right to be in this place, where people do wholesome things like sleep outdoors, where people invite complete strangers to drive cross-country with them.
Which is why Eames can’t molest Arthur; he is wholesome and lovely and clean and kind, and Eames has a sordid tabloid history, only some of which is false, and a tendency to stumble in and out of relationships too quickly.
Eames goes to an empty campsite to sit on a picnic table and fishes out his mobile and calls Yusuf, just because.
“Hey,” Yusuf says. “How are the states treating you?”
“So I’m camping,” Eames tells him. “Somewhere in Montana.”
“Seriously? You’re camping? We did an episode where you had to pretend to sleep outside, and you practically had a conniption.”
“There’s a stream here,” Eames says. “Hear it?”
“Now, there’s an obvious question I could ask here, and I’m trying very sorely to resist. Please answer it for me,” Yusuf says, and Eames grins and misses him. Just a little. It’s to be expected, when you see someone every day and then you don’t.
“I’m still Eames,” Eames says. “This is Eames.”
“No,” Yusuf says. “The other obvious question.”
“I’m with a guy,” Eames sighs. “But it’s not like that.”
“Eames, it’s never ‘not like that’ with you. It is, in fact, always like that.”
“It’s not like that with me and you.”
“And more’s the pity. It would be so good for ratings.”
“This is true,” Eames replies. “Wanna bang?”
“No,” Yusuf says. “Anyway, as happy as I am to know you haven’t been shot, you should save your phone battery because I know your drunk self didn’t pack a charger.”
“Actually, I did. But it doesn’t work in American outlets.”
“Bully for you, then. See you in a week.”
“So long,” Eames says, and hangs up.
When he gets back to the site Arthur is boiling water on a little stove, and has a portable French press set out on the table.
“Coffee,” he says, gesturing. Eames nods, and Arthur pours them each a cup, then sets his down and arches into a stretch.
Eames is not sure how he missed Arthur’s loveliness when they first met, but somehow he did, and now that minor oversight has come back to bite him the ass.
“Let’s go for a hike,” Arthur says, after they’re finished with their coffee and their bread with jam.
Going for a hike is not like Eames expects. They follow the stream from the campground, instead of a trail, and Arthur tells him useless factoids about nearby trees. They eventually make it down to where the stream meets a broad river, and Arthur smiles beatifically.
“Have you ever been skinny dipping, Eames?” he asks.
“I think that water is very cold,” Eames says.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Arthur replies, and begins to strip again, and Eames has to wonder at Arthur’s complete ease with nudity. Eames is aware he’s attractive, but prefers to express this awareness by keeping his pants on around strangers. Arthur, apparently, has no such qualms.
Eames finds himself following suit, simply because it seems lousy to stand around fully clothed when someone else is naked, and also because he’d follow Arthur’s pert little ass anywhere.
Once he’s in the river, which is clear and cold and rock-bottomed, he can kind of see the appeal. On some level, it seems like having sex with the whole world, with the earth and the sky and the water.
“Was that some sort of pagan ritual?” Eames asks Arthur as they’re getting dressed, because Eames is concerned about his ridiculous thoughts about skinny dipping.
“No,” Arthur says, looking at Eames. “But if you’d like to go on a vision quest or do peyote, I could arrange that.”
Eames is, once again, not entirely sure who Arthur is.
“I go to art school,” Arthur adds.
Eames stays in his sleeping bag that night, be he hardly sleeps at all, and instead listens to the night noises outside the tent, and wonders what it’s like to be attacked by a bear.
They pack up the tent and load up the car, return to the highway, and they’re going again.
“We’re going to make it all the way to Minnesota today,” Arthur says. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“Okay,” Eames says. Arthur is driving so Eames gets the atlas out of the door, and looks at the map.
“As my companion on this journey,” Arthur says. “Are you prepared to push the limits of your long-distance driving abilities so we can reach Minneapolis by day’s end?”
“Only if we can stay in a hotel this time,” Eames says. With two beds, he thinks.
“Eames, if we make it to Minneapolis you can have whatever you want. We will be crossing the boringlands of North Dakota. This is very serious.”
“We’re on 94, right?” Eames asks, looking at the map.
“Yes. See that sign? The one shaped like a shield, that says 94?” Arthur points at the road as he’s driving.
“So we’re going through Fargo?” Eames says.
“Yes, but it’s not like the movie. It is no fun at all,” Arthur says. “And if you think it is fun, any pleasure you derive you will sorely regret when we drive through northern Ohio.”
“Arthur, I am wondering if you have some issues with repressed rage.”
“I-90 through northern Ohio is the most boring stretch of road in the universe. It’s where good things go to die.”
“I’m sure you’re right, darling,” Eames says.
Arthur looks at him sharply. “What?”
“What?” Eames asks.
“Did you just call me ‘darling’?”
Eames replays their conversation in his head.
“I suppose I did. Sorry, mate.”
“No, it’s nothing,” Arthur says, but when silence falls it feels awkward, and Eames looks out the window but keeps one eye on Arthur.
“Tell me something,” Arthur says, when they’re about an hour in. The awkwardness has dissolved rather than compounded, and Eames is surprised to find he wants to have something to tell Arthur.
“I called Yusuf this morning,” Eames says.
“Yusuf?” Arthur asks.
“He plays my companion, on the show. He’s my best friend.”
“Oh,” Arthur looks thoughtful. “Ariadne’s my best friend, I think. Do you have siblings?”
“Only child,” Eames said. “Well, I do have a half-brother, but he’s seven.”
“Younger wife?” Arthur asks, one eyebrow raised.
“Yes,” Eames says. “She’s not bad, though. Not a trophy wife or anything, just...younger. Older than me, at least.”
They stop at a greasy spoon for lunch. Arthur turns out to be a vegetarian, and the waitress gives him the stink-eye when he interrogates her about the grease used to cook their french fries, but the milkshakes are probably the best things ever, disgruntled waitress or no. If she spit in them, Eames can’t taste it.
“Could you taste spit in your shake?” he asks Arthur when they leave.
“No,” Arthur says. “Ugh, why’d you suggest that? Unsanitary.”
“Good milkshakes, though,” Eames observes.
They make it to Minneapolis, that night, and Eames gets them a motel on the outskirts. Eames is still treated to a view of Arthur’s chest, but it’s from across the room, and--this is better.
If that’s the case, Eames isn’t sure why he has a harder time falling asleep.
He has an erection when he wakes up, but he deals with it in the bathroom, biting his lip to keep silent. When Arthur asks him about the cut, and Eames says he must’ve bit his lip in his sleep.
Arthur looks at his mouth longer than strictly necessary, but Eames is pretty sure it’s not a thing.
“Chicago!” Arthur says this morning when they get on the highway. “And we should get there with plenty of time to walk around.”
When they arrive, Eames insists that they stay at one of the big hotels where the river intersects the lake, and Arthur puts up minimal fight.
(It goes like this:
“I don’t need you to pay for all this.”
“I want to.”
“I can chip in.”
“I’m a T.V. star, Arthur. You’re an architecture student, and while I’m sure you’ll be devastatingly wealthy one day, that day is not today.”)
“You know what we should do?” Arthur says once they’re in their room.
“No,” Eames says. Something about Arthur’s tone makes him suspicious.
“Jazz club,” Arthur says with great certainty.
“On Monday night?”
“I’m sure somewhere has something.”
“And I’m sure I haven’t got anything to wear,” Eames says, and Arthur raises an eyebrow.
“Shit excuse, Eames. We’re on the fucking Magnificent Mile.”
“And you’ve got something to wear?” Eames asked. “Packed in that car of yours?”
“Of course,” Arthur says.
Eames is pretty certain this is a terrible idea, but Arthur goes down to talk to the concierge.
“Okay,” he says when he returns with a suit bag. “There are shows we can go to, and there’s a Gucci down the street.”
“Gucci?” Eames says. Arthur shrugs.
“You’re the T.V. star, remember? Now go into the bathroom and put on something we can stuff in a bag once you get your suit.”
Eames is not sure why he’s compelled to do everything Arthur says, but he grabs jeans and a t-shirt, and goes into the bathroom.
When he comes out, Arthur is on the phone with his back to Eames.
Eames is pretty sure he should not feel the way he does about Arthur’s back.
“No, Ariadne, he’s not,” Arthur is saying. “I’m sure.”
“Not what?” Eames asks, and when Arthur turns around Eames’ mouth goes dry. Because if he looked delicious dressed like a college student, he looks better now.
“Going to kill me,” Arthur says after a pause. “And if you were, Ariadne knows who you are, so.”
Eames is pretty sure this is a lie, but he runs with it.
“Maybe I just look like Howard Eames, the actor who plays the lead on a popular British sci-fi series, when in fact I am a killer trying to frame him.”
“That would be unfortunate,” Arthur says, and frowns. “Now come on, let’s go.”
“I’m not sure if I’m fit to be seen with you,” Eames says.
“Trust me, you’re fit,” Arthur says, looking him up and down and then sweeping out of the room.
If Eames didn’t know better, he would be pretty sure that was a double entendre. He tries not to read too much into it.
It’s slightly harder not to read too much into it after Arthur gets him in a suit. When he comes out of the dressing room, Arthur’s eyes darken noticably.
“Buy it,” he says, so Eames does.
“It might need to be tailored,” Arthur says curtly after they leave, not looking at him. “But it’ll do for now.”
Eames is not sure what to make of Arthur, still.
He does find he likes jazz more than he thought, but mostly because of the look on Arthur’s face, and the way he shushes anyone who tries to talk to him and isn’t Eames.
Eames falls asleep easily that night, but only because it’s late.
They discuss it, the next morning, and decide they’ll spend one more day in Chicago and then move on to New York, where they’ll spend one night camping (because Arthur drives a hard bargain) and then they can stay in New York City, in a hotel of Eames’ choosing, until Eames flies out and Arthur leaves for Rhode Island (because Eames also knows how to bargain).
Eames calls Yusuf right then, and a plane ticket is booked from Laguardia to Heathrow, leaving Friday.
“Will you be able to leave your new boy toy?” Yusuf asks.
“Don’t call him that,” Eames hisses, because Arthur is across the room.
“So does mean he’s your boyfriend?” Yusuf says. “Or are you still not getting any?”
“The latter,” Eames replies, keeping one eye on Arthur.
“Eames,” Yusuf says. “I know you may not realize this, but I’m pretty sure he’s not putting up with you for your charming personality.”
“I have a charming personality,” Eames says.
“You have a charming personality when you’re acting. Right now, less so.”
“You never have a charming personlity,” Eames says. “I think my phone is running out of battery.”
He hangs up.
“That’s how you talk to your best friend?” Arthur asks from across the room, where he’s lying on his bed looking at the ceiling.
“It’s not polite to listen to other people’s telephone conversations,” Eames tells him.
“What? You interrupted mine, last night.”
“I’m not a polite person,” Eames says, and lies back on his own bed. “But I suspect you are.”
“We should go somewhere,” Arthur says. “We’re in Chicago. There are things to do here.”
“It’s hot out, and in the summer the streets smell like steaming urine,” Eames says.
“Not Chicago’s,” Arthur replies. “Chicago streets smell like sunshine and daisies.”
“Let’s watch T.V.,” Eames says. So they do. Stupid things; reality shows, soaps. Somehow it’s funny, fun, until they get to BBC America and Eames’ face is on the screen.
Eames hates seeing himself act. The single worst thing about television, as opposed to stage, is all the recordings, the way they constantly rise up to taunt him. He doesn’t want to look like that, or be like that. He is not that person.
He is that person, on the screen, running around the TARDIS pulling levers, but he doesn’t want to be, because that person is the Doctor but it is also Eames, replicated a thousand times, everywhere.
“Turn it off,” Eames says, but Arthur laughs.
“No, seriously, turn it off,” Eames repeats, and he can feel his voice getting low and hard.
Arthur looks at him.
“I think we should go outside,” Arthur says.
So they do. Chicago smells like steaming shit, as is to be expected, but the Art Institute is nice. They walk through and look at the paintings, the famous pointillism one, American Gothic, Nighthawks. There are other things, too, photography and miniature rooms buried in the basement, folk art, Asian sculpture.
Arthur is quiet, and Eames can think. There’s a point in museums where his mind always turns to mush, like he’s taken too much in and can’t process it any longer. But today he wants to reach that point, to feel his brains fall out his ears, because if there’s nothing in his head make something that’s there will make sense.
There’s Arthur, for one, Arthur who is his travelling companion and beautiful and possibly probably straight, and who, beyond that, Eames might actually like, as a human being, for his weird easiness.
But it’s not just that, because there’s also Eames. He’d allowed Arthur and thoughts of Arthur to fill up all the empty hours in the car. He had allowed the simple vastness of the landscape, too, to enter his mind and push out all else. But he had ignored the things he was running from; fame, but more than fame, himself.
It was such a pathetic cliche. But unhappiness ran through him somewhere deep inside, and it seemed like the best he could do was to distract himself from it. Seeing himself on the television just peeled back the layers, because there he was. He was playing the Doctor, but he was deeply unhappy.
He could remember filming that episode, and going back to his apartment and just sleeping for awhile. That was his life.
He was sure Yusuf could put things in perspective, because that’s what Yusuf did, but Eames--it was complicated.
They’re looking at The Old Guitarist, that Pablo Picasso painting of a man, blue and haggard and bent over a guitar.
“I’m sorry,” Eames says to Arthur.
“It’s okay,” Arthur says.
“I’m not happy,” Eames says, though he knows he’s already told Arthur this.
“I know,” Arthur replies.
“Are you?” Eames asks.
“Sometimes,” Arthur says.
They keep looking at the painting. This is okay, Eames thinks. This is enough.
“What are you going to do when you get back to England?” Arthur asks him in the car the next morning. Eames is driving, but he’s been watching Arthur out of the corner of his eye.
“What I usually do,” Eames says.
“Be unhappy?” Arthur frowns.
“I’ll figure it out eventually,” Eames says.
When they drive through Gary, Indiana, Arthur sings the song from “The Music Man” and points out the billboard for a strip club named Industrial Strip by the side of the road.
“Gary may smell like ass,” Arthur says, “but it’s the last interesting thing you’ll see for awhile.”
He’s pretty much right. The stop at a rest area in Ohio for McDonald’s, but that’s about it.
They’re camping in the Catskills, this time, and Eames can see what Arthur means about the mountains here being different. They seem older, stooped and weary instead of proud and straight, gentle bumps like the ridges of some great beast’s backbone.
Their bowed backs also look strong, and Eames thinks he might like them.
It’s warm enough out, and Eames convinces Arthur to ditch the tent and just sleep on the wood platform where they’re supposed to pitch it. They can see the bright burn of New York City’s lights on the horizon, but the stars are still there. It’s nice.
When Eames wakes up there’s dew on his face and he’s still in his sleeping bag, but he and Arthur are spooning.
He twists around, and Arthur is awake, looking bleary but amused.
“I’d’ve thought you’d be the big spoon,” Arthur says.
When they get to the city, Eames manages to get them in at the Plaza because he knows Saito and Saito knows someone. And by “someone” Eames means “everyone.”
Arthur just looks vaguely bemused when they get up to their room.
“Is it a British thing, wanting to stay someplace swank?” he asks. “Because I would’ve been perfectly happy at a motel.”
“That’s just because you wouldn’t have been able to get in here,” Eames replies, moving around the room and waving his arms. “Look, Central Park! Out the window!”
“Let’s go to Central Park,” Arthur says. “That’s better than seeing it.”
“Because you can befriend the bums?” Eames asks, and Arthur laughs.
“No,” he says. “Because from here you can’t see the trees for the forest.”
It’s there, in Central Park, that Eames gets recognized. He’s kind of surprised it didn’t happen earlier, actually.
“Doctor!” someone calls from behind. “Howard Eames!”
Eames turns around, even though he knows he shouldn’t. It’s a girl, in jeans and a t-shirt with a satchel slung across her chest. She looks about like any other girl, and she’s grinning broadly.
“I thought so! I love Doctor Who. Could I get you to sign something?” she’s already digging through her bag, and comes up with a moleskine and a pen. “My name’s Meg.”
“Okay, Meg,” Eames says, and plasters a smile on his face. “Always lovely to meet a fan. Now should I make this out to you, or someone else?”
“Me,” she says, and then she’s looking at Arhur. “So, is this, like, your boyfriend?”
So, not just a fan, but a fan who reads the gossip blogs.
Arthur looks at Eames and Eames looks back at him, and he can see Arthur’s eyes go incrementally wider, but he can’t read the expression in them.
“No,” Eames says very gently, because Arthur doesn’t look about to say anything. The girl looks between them, but her smile is still bright, and so apparently she can’t feel the rising of a tide of awkwardness around them.
Eames scrawls his name, and her name, and “Best wishes” or some shit, and gives her back the notebook. He manages to retain his smile and politeness until she walks away, and then he turns to Arthur.
“I’m gay,” Eames says. He’s pretty sure this shouldn’t impact Arthur’s life at all, because he lives so easily in his body and so the casual nudity shouldn’t matter whether or not Eames could be attracted to him. But something in Arthur’s face suggests it matters.
“Oh,” Arthur says, and looks at his own feet, and then Eames’ feet.
“Is that okay?” Eames asks, trying to be gentle. He wants more to be gentle now than he ever has before, because suddenly Arthur seems like he might dissolve or disappear, like the life that he had been brimful with before is sinking down.
“Yeah,” Arthur says. “Yeah, it’s fine. Ariadne thought you were. It’s just--”
And Eames looks at Arthur’s face, and he can see something else there, and he thinks he recognizes it, because he’s good at reading people when he isn’t operating under ridiculous assumptions.
“Arthur,” he says, stepping closer and talking faster. “Arthur. I may be very wrong here--please forgive me if I’m very wrong--”
“Yes,” Arthur says, before all the words are out of his mouth.
Eames kisses him, and Arthur responds in an instant, and it’s like joy is fucking flowing out of him and into Eames, like Eames is a fucking joy vampire, only Eames is pretty sure there will never be any lack of joy, that Arthur is experiencing no deficit. Their mouths come apart and their foreheads bump together, and Arthur’s hands are on Eames’ back and Eames’ hands are on Arthur’s, and it feels complete.
“This whole time?” Eames asks.
“This whole time,” Arthur says, and Eames can feel the words puff across his face.
“So this isn’t our first date, is it?” Eames says.
“No,” Arthur replies.
“Because I want to fuck you in the Plaza,” Eames tells him.
“Okay,” says Arthur.
There are so many things Eames should be thinking about right now, about Arthur in Rhode Island, about his own flight home and his tendency to break himself and other men. But this is Arthur, Arthur’s fingers tangled in his, Arthur who likes him in some inexplicable way that seems to have nothing to do with the Doctor and who Eames might be, and everything to do with who Eames is.
The elevator is empty, but they press against each other anyway, or maybe because it is, Arthur’s hips aligned against Eames’ in the way that, if he’s honest, Eames has wanted ever since that first day in Starbucks, when Arthur had leaned against the counter blowing on his stupid foamy drink, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.
“You,” Eames says. “You’ve been trying to seduce me since the beginning.”
“No,” Arthur says. “But I’m glad it worked.”
Arthur nuzzles Eames’ neck, and somewhere around floor 12 that turns into sucking, and when the elevator doors open they barely manage to stumble out, and they’re rushing down the hallway past housekeeping carts, Eames’ arm around Arthur’s waist, and they’re fumbling to open the door, and then they’re tripping over clothes and falling into bed.
Eames would try to overthink this, but it pretty much seems exactly right, and Arthur’s long limbs are laid bare on a bed with ostentatious gold embellishments on the headboard, so, really, now is not the time.
Arthur will come to England, after he finishes school. Eames will wait, and sometimes flounder, and sometimes pace his apartment late at night wondering if this was a terrible idea. There will be inordinate amounts of phone sex and jacking off in the shower.
When Arthur gets there, only the paparazzi will keep Eames from doing it with him in the airport bathroom. When Eames brings Arthur home, he won’t be able to help feeling like they’ve both arrived, finally, at a destination entirely new.