"Daddy?" The voice is small and, through one sleepy eye, Arthur can just make out the shape of a small, pyjama-clad human silhouetted against the backdrop of the dark bedroom.
"Daddy?" The voice is back again, although this time accompanied by a sharp prod to the abdomen through the duvet. Arthur's reflexes are normally sublime, although there's something about this small finger that always seems to catch him at his most vulnerable.
"What, Luc?" His voice is croaky from sleep and his tone is one of resigned despair.
"There's a monster under my bed, Daddy."
"What?" At this time in the morning, his vocabulary is somewhat limited.
"There's a monster. Under my bed," Luc says slowly, as if talking to a very stupid person. He's used to having to explain everything simply to his father, who has trouble understanding the most fundamental of the situations his four-year old finds himself in. "I don't want it to eat me."
"There isn't a monster under your bed, Luc," Arthur's eyes are closed again.
"Yes there is," Luc says quickly, having been prepared for his father's denial. "It's purple, with lots and lots of teeth."
"How many?" Arthur is now slipping into slumber and Luc prods him again, jolting him awake with a sleepy grumble.
"I don't know how many," Luc replies, as if the question is stupid. "I didn't have time to count them all. I was scared."
"Well go back and count them."
"No. Can I get in with you and Mummy?"
"No. Not until you've counted its teeth."
"But it's scary,"
"Luc, there isn't a monster under your bed. It's not physically possible. I mean, according to practically every law of science under the sun," Arthur's eyes are open now and he's concentrating his full reserve of energy on boring his son. If there's anything Luc hates more than purple monsters with lots of teeth, it's physics. "...you can't fit a monster under a child's bed. It's impossible, I mean..." he trails off as the body of his four-year-old is levitated into the air.
This is strange.
He rolls over.
A pair of slender arms have reached over him and grasped Luc under the armpits, transporting him over the body of his father and into the arms of his very annoyed looking mother. Ariadne tucks Luc neatly into the space between them, where he smiles happily and snuggles his toes into the sheets.
"He wants comfort, Arthur. Not a maths lesson."
"It was physics, actually."
"Shut up."
He does.
He closes his eyes and the small, wriggling body next to him is pressed into his side, wedged like a toddler sandwich. A pair of icy, miniature feet find his shin and he yelps with shock, making the bed shake and, yet again, disturb his wife.
"What in the name of God," Ariadne grumbles. "is going on down there?"
A small giggle.
"Remove your feet from my leg, Luc, or I will remove them for you." The small feet retreat back into the cosiness of the covers, although Arthur knows it is only a matter of time before they find their mark again. Defenceless, he braces himself for the worst, screwing his eyes tight in the dark.
Soon he hears snores. There's definitely two sets – the measured, heavy breathing of Ariadne accompanied by Luc's irregular sniffles – and he relaxes again; the cold feet threat seems to have been eliminated. He settles into the pillow and relaxes his shoulders against the soft pillow.
Creak.
It's a small noise, but the years of training have left an impression on him and his shoulders suddenly tense, his eyes snapping open in the dark.
He waits a moment, but he hears nothing more besides the sleepy breathing of his family. He shuts his eyes again, anxious for sleep.
Creak.
It's upstairs.
Carefully, without waking the small boy curled into his back, Arthur silently removes himself from the bedcovers, burying his feet deep within his slippers as he sits upright on the side of the bed.
He's not imagining it.
Someone's here. In the house. He stands, lifting up his pillow and extracting the Browning Automatic Pistol from underneath it as he does so.
The pillow's soft, but not that soft. Ariadne reckons sleeping on the hard metal of the gun is going to permanently damage his spine.
She's still asleep, an arm curled around her son.
Arthur creeps over to the open doorway, waiting for the sound.
Creak.
He's through the door and out in the hallway in a second, the arm holding the gun snapping around the door in a flash.
The landing light is on. Ariadne always turns it off. Saving the Planet and all that.
Creak.
It's coming from Luc's bedroom.
Fear grips Arthur by the heart. His son is safe. He's with his mother.
Slowly, Arthur opens the door to his son's bedroom, the light spilling in through the open doorway. He's poised and ready to shoot anything that moves in the dark.
The thing under the bed doesn't exactly move, it sort of splurges out, groaning.
In a British accent.
"Turn the sodding light out. It's as bright as fuck."
Eames. The bastard.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Arthur exclaims, turning the main light on with absolutely no regard for Eames' request. Eames writhes for a moment in the bright light, cursing, like a particularly foul-mouthed Dracula exposed to sunlight. After a while, Eames stops writhing and braves the light, opening his eyes like a newborn puppy, his eyes puffy and bloodshot.
"What happened to you?" Arthur still stands in the doorway, shock paralysing every part of him except his mouth.
"Jack Daniels."
"You've never had problems with liquor before."
"That was before Celeste."
"Ah."
Arthur had met Celeste only once, but she'd left the sort of impression that engraved itself on the inside of a man's eyelids. Beautiful, yet with all of the tact and decorum of a blunt axe, Arthur and Ariadne had both agreed that she and Eames were meant to be – they could shout foul things at the guests on The Jerry Springer Show together. But something had gone wrong – they didn't know what – and nowadays Eames seemed to smell more like a dishrag than an actual human being.
"But that's doesn't explain what you're doing under Luc's bed."
"What?"
"What are you doing under the bed?"
Eames stares wildly around him, patting the wooden floor with his palms.
"I'm under the bed," he says slowly, as if only just noticing which, Arthur realises, he probably is. "I thought I was in the guest room."
"No," Arthur replies. "You're in Luc's room. Come on. I'll find you a bed." Dragging his friend up from the floor by the arm, he escorts him along the corridor, pausing only when Eames takes a small detour along the way to land headfirst in the laundry basket.
Finally, Eames is lying sideways on the bed in the guestroom, while Arthur drags the sheets over him.
"How is he? Luc? I'm sorry if I scared the little man..." Eames' voice is croaky with fatigue.
"He'll be fine. Fear is character-building." Arthur smiles wryly down at his friend. "C'mon. Get some sleep. Big day tomorrow."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. You've got one hell of a hangover booked for about, hey, nine o' clock?"
Eames groans and Arthur sniggers.
"Goodnight, darling," Arthur says, mimicking his friend's usually cheerful tone.
"Fuck off."
Arthur closes the door behind him.
"Bitch," Eames mutters, though it's clearly audible through the door.
"Jerk," Arthur replies.
He stumbles, now more tired than ever, back to bed and to the pair of little cold feet that attach themselves to his leg.
But this time, he doesn't mind.