Eames never pictured the end when starting out. It always felt whole and perfect, and everything he'd been looking for.
When Arthur walked out of their Lisbon apartment, Eames had punched the door closed behind him. He'd punched it hard enough to break two fingers on his left hand and had driven himself to the hospital after consuming most of a bottle of vodka. It wasn't his finest moment. He'd assumed he would spend the night there, but there were other patients waiting and apparently, "My boyfriend broke up with me and I'm fall-down-drunk with two broken fingers" wasn't a good enough reason to keep him for observation.
So he'd staggered to the car with a splinted hand he sincerely thought should be throbbing like the old cartoons and passed out in the driver's seat. When he woke, it was to someone tapping on his window. It took him a minute to remember why the steering wheel was on that side. Then he went to roll down his window to talk to the bloke in the security uniform and ended up bumping his fingers, which reminded him he'd previously broken them. And then he remembered why he'd broken them.
"Hey, buddy!" came the muffled voice from the other side of the glass. "You can't park here. Need you to move along."
Eames nodded, held up his bandaged hand as a weak excuse, and started the car. His head was throbbing, his hand was throbbing, and his arse was throbbing from the goodbye fuck Arthur had talked him into before he'd let Arthur walk out of his life.
He waited until the uniform had walked off, then banged his aching head on the steering wheel. It wasn't a surprise, per se, when it didn't help, but Eames sighed and reminded himself that breaking his other hand wouldn't be pursuant to good personal hygiene, among many other things.
"Eames, come on," Arthur had scoffed as he rebuckled his belt, "how long was this really going to last? I mean, seriously, look at us. We don't fit."
Eames made his way home, flipping turn signals awkwardly with his right hand and eventually pulling into the space next to Arthur's. Next to the one that used to be Arthur's.
When he got to the top of the stairs and fished his apartment keys from his pocket, he expected the place to look different. But the door swung open like it always did, and the chairs, table, telly, and sofa were all where they had been before. The painting he'd stolen in Glasgow still hung on the long wall, and Eames realised he hated it. He'd loved it before: the intricate details and the painstaking precision that had gone into making it, the kind of work that took an artist months, maybe years to finish. Now he wanted to take a hatchet to it and replace it with a Jackson Pollock. Or maybe a successory.
He stopped in the kitchen, and the bare stovetop mocked him. With more violence than was necessary, Eames grabbed the butter from the fridge and the bread from above it and slammed both on the surface, because he had never imagined hating that Arthur would always leave the bread and butter on the stove every morning after he left for the day. He'd never imagined he would suddenly and fiercely hate all the memories that flooded him now of repeatedly coming home to a giant puddle of grease leaking under the bread bag, and all the times he had just chuckled and written down "butter" on the grocery list and reminded himself to check before he left next time, because it was all so Arthur, and Arthur was just so adorable and quaint.
He picked up the bread and smashed it again, and again, and again. Fuck Arthur. Just… just fuck him. Eames threw the flattened loaf against the backsplash, where it thumped limply back onto the stove. Finally, he plucked the scotch from the cupboard above the sink and his bottle of pills from the doctor and slammed the door to the bedroom.
For two days, Eames was content to sleep and eat crap food from the pantry until nothing was left but a box of Triscuits while he watched the light from the window crawl across the wall of their… his bedroom. The third day he took both pillows from Arthur's side down to the dumpster, shuffling outside in his dressing gown and slippers and just chucking the pillows, cases and all, in the bin. A woman watched him, stranger-danger written on her face, while his face said, Go ahead, fucking ask me. I dare you.
That night, he regretted throwing them out, moving his pillows to the middle of the bed and pretending he liked sleeping spread out across the mattress, while surreptitiously trying to see if the space under Arthur's pillows smelled like Arthur. It didn't.
When Eames finally turned his phone back on, he had 56 unread emails, all of them junk, seven unopened voicemails from his bank, which he promptly deleted without listening to, and four texts. One was from Yusuf, asking if he'd caught the match, one was from Mikhail about a job next month, one was from a cruise company explaining he'd won a free cruise if he responded to their text, and one was from Gael that just said, "hey".
Nothing from Arthur. Eames sat looking at a half-composed text for 20 minutes, erasing, retyping, erasing, closing, opening, re-retyping, erasing. His stomach gurgled, reminding him that the last box of crackers was gone, and he'd already promised himself he'd get some groceries the next time he went out. Except then instead of going out he'd gone back to bed. He deleted the draft, determined not to be the one that broke the text silence.
He should really take a shower if he was going out, but the thought of all that work was exhausting. He settled for splashing his face and hair with water and reaching for the deodorant. But the deodorant he'd been using for months had been Arthur's brand. Eames had switched when he found out what Arthur used because it was nice to catch the scent of him throughout the day. Now, though... Eames dug through the drawers in the bathroom and unearthed an old stick of the gel kind, which he hated, but which didn't, in fact, smell like Arthur. As that was the lesser of two evils, he slathered it on and went to find a shirt.
Eames sighed as he moved to his half-empty closet and muttered curses under his breath at all the button down shirts he owned. The only ones he'd be able to wear until his hand got better were painful to look at. There was the t-shirt he'd worn the day they went to the pier, there was the blue shirt Arthur loved, a mustard yellow shirt Arthur hated, and the fisherman's sweater Arthur had bought him. They all looked back at him, sneering. In the end, he pulled the sweater over his head and threw the rest in a garbage bag to join the pillows later.
His oldest jeans would do, the ones with ragged holes which fit like a glove, where he had to carry his wallet in his right pocket because the left one had worn completely through. Worked, since he only had the one hand.
He left them unbuttoned, shoved his feet into his untied boots, and clomped down the stairs. The shop was just around the corner, he'd pick up a few things to tide him over until he felt like going out again. On second thought, he should maybe get more than a few things.
It happened after he'd paid for all the items and shoved them all in one bag. It had only been four days, which was why it was so unfair that when he turned to go, Arthur was standing behind him. If you're going to run into your ex in a random public place, it should be a minimum of six months, so you have at least the possibility of being with someone else, have had a shower, and aren't wearing clothes they'd bought you like a sad sack of shite.
He wanted to tell him, "Get out of my shop, this is the one I go to. It's the one we went to, but you didn't want to be part of the "we" anymore, so you don't get to do the "we" things anymore. Any of them. And, while we're on the topic, I expect you to stay the fuck away from the zoo, too. Also, this is the closest shop to the apartment-where you're no longer living-so you had to know this was a possibility, whereas I was at a distinct disadvantage." But he didn't. He didn't say anything. Mostly because he was giving Arthur an option to philosophically ponder the miscalculations of his life. But also because he had no fucking clue what to say, and also his brain seemed to have stopped working.
"Wow," Arthur said, giving him a once over. "Eames, I didn't expect to see you here. You look…"
And Arthur's face… fuck. He looked almost hungry.
"... primitive," he finished.
Eames didn't know what the hell that was supposed to mean, either the word choice or the eye-fuck he'd just gotten. Because that part had never been a problem in their relationship, and Arthur looked persuadable, to say the least. Arthur also looked damned good. He was wrapped in a three-piece grey Tom Ford suit, and Eames wanted to lick him. Just shove him up against a wall and worship with his tongue.
Except… Arthur looked a little too good. Eames could feel the grease in his own hair, the stiffness of a body barely moved, the itch of stubble he hadn't bothered to shave. He also keenly felt four days of too much alcohol and too much sleep, and a hand wrapped in clean, white gauze because the last wrapping had been covered in Doritos dust and hummus. No, Arthur looked fantastic. If Eames had been anyone else, this could have been Arthur just popping down to the shops to pick up a few essentials and possibly a random bloke.
"And you, darling. You look," Eames said, licking his lip and watching Arthur watch him, "... unaffected."
Arthur's eyes flashed up to his at that, blinking a moment before a scowl fell over his handsome features. "I guess, if that's what you think…"
"It is." It was obvious that Arthur would move on after this. Well, Eames was a survivor too.
Arthur didn't lose his frown, but he nodded. "Well, then."
Eames hefted his bag and tried not to look bitter. He had to pass Arthur to leave the shop and he resented the hell out of it.
"Did you get that text from Mikhail?" Arthur's tone was carefully neutral, his face giving nothing away.
Eames paused. "Yes," he admitted.
Arthur nodded again. "Let me know if you want me there or not. I'll leave it up to you."
Eames huffed a laugh and donned a pair of sunglasses. "Darling, I don't give a flying fuck what you do." And to his surprise, he meant it.
And Eames left, feeling broken and whole.