Disclaimer: I don't own anything! The song is Hello, Young Lovers from the musical The King and I.

Author's Note: I am out of high school forever as of last Friday. It's weird; so far, it's just felt like one really long weekend. My graduation rehearsal is tomorrow and the actual graduation is next week. After that...God knows. Gonna try and get me a job. I can't feed my book and video game addiction without money, after all.

Also, since it is that time of year, congrautlations to anyone else who might be graduating. Class of 2012!

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art...It has no survival value; rather, it is one of those things that gives value to survival."
-C.S Lewis

Eames is fond of musicals.

Arthur came home once to find Eames singing as he cooked.

"Be brave, young lovers, and follow your star,
Be brave and faithful and true,
Cling very close to each other tonight,
I've been in love like you…"

Arthur set down his keys as quietly as he could and toed off his shoes as he shrugged off his coat. Eames had a wonderful singing voice, smooth and low, but that never stopped Arthur from teasing him if he sang in the shower.

"I know how it feels to have wings on your heels,
And to fly down the street in a trance.
You fly down the street on the chance that you'll meet,
And you meet—not really by chance."

He was singing along with the soundtrack, which, if Arthur listened for it, he could hear playing low on the small radio they kept on the counter.

There was a short round of hissed cursing and Arthur could imagine Eames' expression, no doubt brought on by singed fingers from the frying pan. The sound of running water was gone as soon as it came. Arthur loosened his tie as he padded across the wooden floors to the kitchen door, unsurprised that Eames didn't notice him as he continued making…whatever it was that he was making. The forger liked to experiment, even if said experiments didn't always turn out well.

"…mories are happy tonight.
I've had a love of my own.
I've had a love my own, like yours.
I've had a love of my own…"

"The King and I. Interesting choice." Arthur set the grocery bag down on the counter. "They were out of rice, but I thought pasta would make a good substitute."

Eames turned to look at him, opening the bag and pulling out the pasta. "Thank you, darling. And I thought you weren't fond of musicals?"

"I only know a few and most of them are because I see you watching them late at night."

"Most?"

Arthur shrugged a little. "Mina was in Guys and Dolls in high school. It grew on me."

Eames laughed, loud and warm. It was easy to imagine; Arthur, in his neat suits and his dry wit, enjoying a musical like that. "Next time it comes to town, perhaps we'll be able to catch it."

"Perhaps."

Eames disappeared from the world for a year.

Arthur found out about it when they went early to a job in Florida to scope everything out. The site looked good, with multiple exits and Arthur had already found a good rendezvous point in case things went wrong. They drove out about an hour to the beach with a classic rock station playing—"Do something spontaneous, darling."—and now they were walking, two sets of footprints side by side in the sand.

Eames had left his shoes in the car and was walking close enough that the water gently lapped at his feet. He slowed to a stop, hands in his pockets as he looked out at the water. It was late enough that the tourists had gone and all that was left were some college students that were beginning to pack up.

Arthur mimicked him, socks stuffed in his shoes and his shoes in a hand. The sea, like this, was a strange sight still to him. He'd grown up in Vermont and then had gone to Iraq. They'd had lakes back in Vermont, big things that he remembered mistaking for the ocean when he was a kid, but nothing like this. No smell of salt, no mountains to be seen on the opposite shore. He didn't often get a chance to go to the beach. When he pictured an ocean, he still pictured it as what he saw from the airplane window.

"My grandmother used to talk about wanting to see the ocean." Arthur began. He wasn't sure why he suddenly felt like sharing that piece of information—he'd almost forgotten all he'd known about the grandmother who'd lived three neighborhoods over and had come to the house every holiday. "She had paintings of it all through her house and she loved lighthouses. But she was always too poor to go and, when she had enough money, she was too old for travel like that."

(He doesn't remember the photograph of the man that she kept beside the small statues of the lighthouses, or of the photographs on the wall. They were in black and white and many were browned from age. He doesn't remember that the man wore a Navy uniform. He never knew about his grandfather who his brother was named after that had made it through the second World War and had lived through so much until a heart attack took him. He doesn't remember the way that his grandmother would talk about the sea like it would be the place where she could find her husband one day)

Eames glanced sideways. "…My mum's mum lived by the sea. She would say that the sea was the great healer. It could wash everything away and always come back the same, but different. Without memory, she'd say. Without regrets." (Sometimes, Eames thinks that Arthur is a bit like the sea. Or is it Cameron? Constantly shifting names and personalities—not quite as many as Eames, but Arthur's breaks with his aliases are cleaner than Eames')

Arthur hummed in recognition, taking a few steps forward until the water brushed over his feet. It was colder than he thought, but not as cold as the water had always been back in Vermont. Florida sun was good at keeping things warm.

(They've been a little broken recently. Arthur and Eames, that is. Not the point man and the forger, not professionally. In that respect, they still work together as flawlessly as they did in that very first dream. But personally, they're a little broken. Mal's memory is in their minds and it doesn't want to leave, despite it having been more than two years and Eames crosses lines like they aren't there and Arthur isn't sure if he can forgive him for that.)

Arthur thought about mentioning that whenever he or his brother or his sister were hurting when they were kids, his mother would tell them to go lie down in her bed and she would come in with a plate of chocolate chip cookies—because while white chocolate macadamia nut was their favorite, chocolate chip was best for the heart, or so she told them—and she would sit in a rocking chair by the bed, pull out her glasses and show them a book with several stories and she would say, "Which one would you like me to read?"

Arthur remembered looking up at her and asking, "Both?"

She would smile and place her glasses on her nose just so and say, "Yes, I think we can do both."

It was a ritual, something that they knew they were always welcome to. Arthur wondered if Mina had curled in their mother's bed after Arthur James Reynolds' death, had nibbled at chocolate chip cookies with their mother as she read a story.

"…I lived with her. For about a year. I must've been…fourteen. Didn't go to school. Just stayed and helped her do laundry, clean, walked on the beach."

Arthur looked at Eames. "With your grandmother?"

Eames nodded and he seemed to debate with himself for a moment before he said, "…Yes. It was after my mother died." Arthur didn't ask what happened to Eames' father. It was one of those lines that he was careful not to cross, like Sherallyn and Amara.

This ocean wasn't like the ocean Eames remembered growing up. This ocean didn't rumble like England shores, didn't have the same grey skies and cold weather. This ocean was softer, warmer, and yet, Eames had seen what this ocean could do that the one back in England couldn't. He'd seen news reels about the hundred mile an hour winds that ripped houses to pieces, that tore trees out from the roots. Had heard about the weeks without electricity or water after one of their storms—it's too light a word for what those forces of nature were.

Deceptively soft, then. Deceivingly warm. But the qualities were the same. This ocean didn't remember things either. All the debris from the storms had been swept away. This one could heal too.

And Eames wanted to fix what he'd done. Wanted to fix the two of them because they'd both been a little broken since before they met, but now it was all getting worse and he knew that he was the catalyst. Or rather, Curiosity was, with her silver-painted smile and beckoning hands, when she'd led him into that warehouse to slip into Arthur's dreams to be killed by the twin brother who wasn't supposed to exist anymore.

He wanted to go back to where they'd been, where Arthur wasn't always the point man in his sharp suits with sharp eyes and sharp edges (It's a defense mechanism, Eames knows. It's the reason Arthur hasn't fallen apart like Dom or like Eames did for all those months. But this Point Man is too sharply edged. He's hurting himself because he's holding his secrets closer than they need to be.)

He wanted to go back to when Arthur wasn't always in his suits, when he wore jeans and would get annoyed at his curls. When he swore creatively when he hit his shin against furniture in the dark. When he could still be somewhat Cameron, could still sit and enjoy a glass of wine on a balcony.

And Eames could be more than the Forger, which was what he'd fallen into being because the Forger was safe. The Forger made it easy to forget things like spirited Hellcats and their unashamed laughter and the dancing in a small, shared apartment. He could go back to being Eames, the one who loved a daughter who he didn't know, who missed a wife he no longer had. One who could make breakfast and get annoyed when his spices were out of order—sometimes, he swore Arthur did it just to mess with him.

He missed being themselves.

Eames' poker chip isn't a totem.

Its edges were worn, the colors a little faded, the name of a Vegas casino hardly visible anymore. Then again, it's been a long time. A long time since they first escaped the military and, rather than leaving the country as most would have been expected to do, they drove. Drove out through the endless flats of the Midwest and right past the Grand Canyon until they turned into Las Vegas.

After all, people disappear there all the time, whether forever or for a few days. Where else would they go?

Arthur had known about Eames' gambling. Everyone in the dreamshare program had. So he would slip through the casino, a polite shadow, keeping an eye out for any government agents while Eames gambled whatever money he had away.

"Thought you would stop me." Eames said later when they're on the elevator. "Since you're such a stick in the mud."

Arthur gave him a look. "You're an adult, you speak English, you have your own money. You can do anything you want."

Eames tilted a smirk at Arthur, eyeing him up and down. "Anything?"

Arthur rolled his eyes, but Eames caught the tips of his ears pinking. "So long as it's not with me."

"That's cold. I thought we had something special."

"That's because you're delusional and have had one too many drinks, Mr. Eames."

They were sharing a room—the first of many. Money was hard to come by when you're new to the criminal life—though that didn't last long. Government agents were soon searching the building after being tipped off that they were there and they'd had to go out through a side door and into the brightly lit streets of Las Vegas, stolen PASIV in hand. But not before Eames—with his almost kleptomaniac habits—had snatched a chip from one of the tables.

Arthur gunned their stolen car down the stretch of open desert road until he felt they were a sufficient distance away before he slowed down a little. "Why did you take that?"

Eames glanced at him before looking thoughtfully at the poker chip he was flipping along his knuckles. "…Call it proof."

"Proof? Of what?"

"That we're a good team. Not just anyone can escape from government agents, you know. And besides, I wanted a souvenir."

"You're too sentimental, Eames."

"And you have an ice block where your heart's supposed to be, darling."

"Don't call me that."

The pet name had slipped out, the first time it ever had. The only other person Eames had called 'darling' was his wife and daughter. He smiled to himself and settled back in his seat; maybe this was what people called a sign.

(A few months later, word will get around of a new way to keep track of reality, found by a woman in Paris. A totem, she calls it. Arthur will read the news out loud to Eames, who's brushing his teeth and say, "…What do you think of Paris in the summer?" And Eames would reply, "Sounds wonderful." while thinking of the poker chip he's taken to keeping in his pocket. )

Eames makes good on his promises.

Arthur pressed his face further into the pillow. He was an early riser, a habit leftover from his mother, who always went into work several hours before she needed to and her children, who attended the same school as she did, would go with her. But this was early even for him.

"Eames…" The threat is there, even in a sleep-drowsed voice.

Familiar lips brush against his neck, his jaw. "Darling, it's Christmas."

Despite himself, Arthur was wakening to Eames' presence, as familiar to him as his own shadow. "I thought th' point of Christmas was to sleep in." He said, tilting his head so he could look at his lover.

"How very…lazy of you."

Arthur rolled onto his back to look at Eames properly. "What are you doing awake anyway? It's—"

"Three in the morning? I'm aware."

"Uh-huh. Tell me you weren't woken by a sudden epiphany."

"That's redundant. Epiphanies, by definition, are sudden."

"'S too early for this."

"C'mon, darling. It's Christmas."

"So you've said." But Arthur allowed himself to be tugged out of bed, hissing when his feet hit the cold floor. "It's like your six years old."

When they got to the living room, Arthur sat himself cross-legged on the couch, wiping the last remnants of sleep from his eyes. Eames ducked beneath their mini-tree—not even an exaggeration. The tree was perhaps the length of Arthur's hands put together—and pulled something out. He placed the badly wrapped present in Arthur's lap before sitting beside him.

Arthur unwrapped the present and blinked at the dark blue, fuzzy socks. Very fuzzy. "You were serious."

"Of course I was." A teasing smile played around Eames' lips. "You're lucky I didn't get them in the highlighter shades. I thought about it though."