A/N: I know, I know, I should be working on Alive, but this plot point just hit me out of nowhere and I had to write it. I just had to. Don't hurt me, Alone/Alive fans. Please don't forget to review!
To Begin
000
Eames is laughing.
Eames will die laughing, you think, bullet through his spinal cord or knife up between his ribs and he'll be laughing at something, death perhaps, or you. He'll be saying dear, I told you so, and that will be the end of it.
You spend more and more time going under.
You think, sometimes when you allow yourself to think, rare times, you think that Eames must have a room full of secrets, in this business and at the very top and pilfering poker chips at the tables in Boston, and you wonder how often he gambles himself. He comes in on a Saturday at one in the morning and says this girl, Arthur, you won't believe, and you believe, you believe because he smells like perfume and there's a bite mark on the side of his neck and he's wearing that grin that he doesn't show you, not really. He says Arthur, oh Arthur, and now he's laughing at you and you think he's going to die like that, one day, just like that, in a dream or maybe not in a dream, impossible and wrecked and utterly perfect.
You've been working, he says.
You wonder why he's surprised.
You say some people like to earn their pay, standing there by your desk like you're guarding it, like you don't want him to see who you are and he sinks into your swivel chair and tilts it back.
He says nothing. You don't like it when he doesn't speak, it makes you feel like he's starting to understand you. You've only left one light on in the warehouse and it boxes you in, Eames and you in a ring and you think you can feel the warmth from his body, or perhaps you're imagining it, again.
You spend more and more time going under.
You spend more and more time where Eames can't be and Eames reaches for your stack of papers. You've arranged them, painstakingly, not a single edge out of line because chaos is Eames and you think enough about him already.
You've got to stop doing this to yourself, Eames says.
If I stop you're all going to die down there, you say, and that's true, because if you stop working Eames' eyes will pull you under and you'll make a mistake, you'll make too many mistakes.
It only takes one mistake to end things.
You don't know if you want things to end or to stay.
You think whenever you allow yourself to think that this is the final point, the dilemma, the edge of the cliff that leads straight into Limbo, tiny rocks falling down when you move your feet and there's nothing down there, you've told Ariadne this. There is nothing.
Eames isn't nothing.
Eames is so far from nothing.
Eames couldn't ever be nothing, you think, quick smile like something snapping, like twigs.
Eames says Arthur, darling, and you're thinking about whether it would be better to want all the things you can't ever have or to have nothing and just be done with it.
Eames says Arthur, darling, you're working too hard and you snatch the papers away from him, fingers trembling but only somewhere near your bones, vibration that goes down your arm, shakes your teeth. Eames won't see this.
(Eames won't see many things.)
You say your idea of work differs from mine and he says are you angry? Don't be angry, sweetheart, and you don't know what to say to that.
I'm not angry, you say.
You're just tired, Eames says.
Yes, I'm tired, you say and you don't normally admit this but tonight it's true, the clock still ticking, the lipstick smudge still on Eames' shirt.
You're so tired you almost close the half-metre and, damn it all, kiss him, the bastard, you think.
You're so tired.
Instead you reach out your hand and you turn off the light. Things are better that way.
000
You think Eames will go out in a hailstorm of bullets and you wake up gasping, clutching your sheets.
You spend more and more time going under.
Not always intentionally.
You spend more and more time in front of the mirror each morning, straightening your vest and your jacket, your tie, because a Japanese man you respected once told you that this is the ultimate paradox, a theorem of pleasing counterweight, a truth, and the less you reveal in your face and your manner the more you reveal of the state of your soul, all the order and stillness and equilibrium you make to conceal all the terrible things that you know.
To conceal all the terrible things that you've done.
And the terrible things that you're itching to do.
Eames says Arthur, you always hide too much, dear, but you don't, you've laid yourself open and bare and Eames just can't see this.
You don't know why.
000
It's Ariadne.
It's always Ariadne.
You think she probably knows by now, no dull light-bulb and yet she's still here, on her side, brown hair loose and spread in a fan on the pillows. She's looking at you, she's always looking. She's patient because she knows how you think.
Just tell him, she says and you wish you were her, still young and with nothing to lose anyway.
I can't, you say.
(You don't know why.)
000
You'd worry that she would tell someone if not for the fact that she's who she is, and you think perhaps some part of you loves her, loves the simple way she loves you.
Loves the simple way she loved Cobb.
Once.
Eames comes in on a Monday afternoon and Ariadne looks up, scarf wound up to her chin. She says Eames, Arthur here needs to talk to you, and you say no, I don't, I've got nothing to say. Eames has his shirt rumpled all the way down his front and he looks like he hasn't slept all night, no surprise, but for a different reason to why you haven't slept because he's grinning in that spectacular way that leaves knots all along the length of your spine.
Ariadne, dear, Eames is saying now, Arthur never feels the need to talk to me. Is it my birthday?
No it isn't, Ariadne says and whacks him fondly as she goes out. Play nice.
You feel Eames say I never play nice a full second before he says it aloud. The clang of the warehouse door as it closes is sudden and sealing, Eames and you again in this circle of all the things you can't say, don't dare.
You think –
You don't dare to think.
Eames drops into a chair right next to you and you can see the light skin on the inside of his wrist.
Eames says well then, spit it out, darling, we've only got the rest of the day and you snap without even meaning to, say don't call me that, Eames, then you're out of your seat and your stomach is heaving right under your throat. There's your desk like a star and you head for it. It's familiar, it's something you've learnt to stand.
This is perhaps the first time Eames has looked at you properly.
Something happen? he says and for once he sounds sober, for once he sounds like he actually means it.
You don't turn and you tell him no, nothing happened, and the desk is the only reason you're standing and you say nothing new, Eames, anyway.
Nothing new doesn't mean nothing's happened, he says.
You hate him for always being right.
You hate him for the way he is, the way that he slumps against everything and the way that he never slumps against you. You hate him for his smile, his hands, the first time you saw him in Monte Carlo and the way he looked at you from under his lashes, chips piled high and thumbing his wedding ring, afterwards in the alley with his breath in fog and that stilted angle at which he'd held his head, said Cobb, you work for Cobb, don't you, and you couldn't think anything else but yes.
You hate him.
You hate the way that he stands, that he walks, that he's found the rim of your desk and he's leaning against it with both his arms crossed. He smells like faint cologne and gin.
Your lungs are stretched as tight as drums.
You want to say it.
You want to reach out and grab his collar and say it right against his mouth, I hate you, Eames, I've always hated you, and you want to wake up with his lips in your hair. You don't want to say I've made a mistake, with Eames leaning closer to you on the desk and the afternoon sun climbing over his cheek and he says I didn't think you made mistakes.
(There was a time when you didn't think you made them either; but Monte Carlo has cured you of that, alright.)
I've made, you say, and he looks at you, and you stop.
It only takes one mistake to end things.
You're so tired.
You're just so bloody tired.
You're so tired and you spend too much time going under to places where Eames is not, cannot be, and when you close the half-metre and, damn it all, kiss him, you think to yourself yes, I've made the mistake and Eames mutters against you, says yes, finally.
000
You think –
You don't even dare to think.
And Eames isn't letting you, anyway.
000
You wake with Eames' lips in your hair.
Eames is laughing.
Softly.
His eyes are slate gray.
You say to him what on earth are you laughing at and he says sweetheart, with his sheets tangled over your legs and the sun pooling over the small of your back, and you wonder why you ever went under at all when you've got all the things that you can't ever have, and Eames says, with his palm resting over your hip, that it only takes one mistake to begin.
And you (hate) him for always being right.
000
The End.
A/N: Whoo! Eames/Arthur fic finished in record time (two hours)! Seems like I just can't stop writing these two, even when Uni beckons... rather unattractively. If you enjoyed this, please feel free to Author Alert me (I'll no doubt have more Eames/Arthur to share), or feel free to take a look at my Eames/Arthur work-in-progress, Alive, which is a sequel to Alone (both on my Profile Page). Please don't forget to review, dears! Until next time.