Chapter 5: Okay

When Arthur woke up, he felt as though he had been asleep for a million years. Everything around him felt surreal, heavy. His limbs felt coated in sticky syrup, stuck in place. His mind was slow, sluggish.

When Arthur finally motivated himself to open his eyes, they opened to darkness. Not recognizing the ceiling, or the weight of the blankets on top of him, panic began to skate across the surface of his mind. Arthur's breath quickened, although he was quick to control the noise. An ache began to develop deep in his chest. Where am I?

Arthur snapped his head to the side, and immediately had to shut his eyes against the onslaught of pain that greeted him. Dizzying waves of agony crashed over his left side. Arthur's instinctive response was to clench his fists, but both of his hands protested from the movement.

In his left palm, Arthur felt the telltale prickle of freshly done sutures. Feeling the raised thread, Arthur concluded the crosses were too wide to be his usual modus operandi, but too methodical to be done by himself in his current state. So… I have a friend somewhere.

The pain finally lessening, Arthur again cautiously opened his eyes, blinking owlishly as his gaze adjusted to the darkness around him. Still with his head turned, Arthur saw a light colored wall. Moonlight streaked in faint segmented rays across the wooden flooring. Following the lighted path, Arthur's perusal of the room ended in the darkened corner across from his aching head.

With a twitch of surprise, Arthur realized he wasn't alone. Somehow, some way, Arthur hadn't noticed the plaid armchair in the shadows, a figure resting in its depths. The chair was perfectly situated to face the open doorway on the opposite side of Arthur.

The person was slumped over, supported by a wing of the armchair. Their head was resting on their shoulder, and their thick arms were crossed over their chest. Arthur followed the curve of the silhouette, the broad shoulders, the jawline, and let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. It was Eames. He was at Eames'. Eames had stitched his hand. He was okay. I am okay.

Comforted by this information, Arthur was again lulled to sleep by the sound of Eames' heavy breathing.

Arthur's mouth tasted like a sewer.

It was his first thought upon waking.

The second being whoever had forgotten to shut the goddamn curtains better run, because Arthur was prepared to commit 1st degree murder. Anything to stop the light currently beating down upon his shut eyelids.

Groaning, Arthur opened his eyes. He tried to move further up the bed, but found his both of his hands restricted, one below and one above the blankets.

"Oh, you finally decided to join the land of the living, darling?"

Arthur stopped in his motions, gradually turning towards Eames' voice.

Eames was leaning forward in the armchair, his bare forearms resting on his knees. He had traded his maroon pullover for a blue and brown striped button down, sleeves pushed up to the elbows. Eames hadn't lined up the buttons correctly upon fastening the shirt, one side of the collar raised slightly higher than the other. His brown slacks bore dark stains, conspicuously matching the color of dried blood. His normally slicked back hair was mussed, brown strands lying astray - as though Eames had repeatedly run his hand through the fibers. Exhaustion shone through his confident smirk, the beginnings of purple bruises of sleep deprivation forming under his eyes.

"Mr. Eames, you look like shit," Arthur croaked, immediately entering a coughing fit upon uttering the phrase.

Eames rose from his position in the chair, striding over to the bedside table. He lifted a glass previously unnoticed by Arthur off the surface, leaving a ring of condensation in its wake.

He moved closer to Arthur's position on the pillow, lowering the glass until it rested near to his mouth. Between coughs, Arthur wrinkled his nose at the straw presented to him. At Eames' long-suffering sigh, Arthur fumbled until he caught the straw between his parched lips. He greedily sucked at the liquid being offered to him, inhaling huge gulps of water until Eames took the glass away. "Slow down Arthur. England is not suffering from a drought at the moment."

Gasping a lungful of air after he downed the rest of the water, Arthur slumped further back into the pillow. I hadn't realized how thirsty I was.

Eames arched an eyebrow at Arthur, placing the drink back onto the table. "And you're saying I look like shite. Dear Arthur, I encourage you to take a look around and reformulate your comment."

Arthur opened his mouth, prepared to shoot back a response, but decided against it as he took in his surroundings.

Sometime in the night (Or day, Arthur thought, he really had no idea how long he'd been asleep), Eames had changed the bandages encircling his midsection, leaving yet another pile of bloodied dressings heaped near the door. Ice packs and other assorted medical equipment lay scattered at the foot of his bed. Arthur felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck as he observed the huge mound of quilts piled on top of him.

"You had a fever," Eames said, following his line of sight. "Wasn't sure if it was going to turn into anything, although luckily it broke on Sunday."

"On Sunday?" Arthur questioned, feeling a rising sense of unease. "How long have I been here, exactly?"

"Well, it's," Eames checked a clock on the opposite wall, "Seven a.m. now," Eames made a big show of holding out his hands, spreading his fingers. "So I'd say about three weeks, give or take a few days."

"What?" Arthur exclaimed, scrambling for a higher position in the bed. "Three weeks?!"

Eames broke out into a lopsided smirk, waving his hands in a 'calm down' gesture. "You're so easy to get riled up, darling. Settle down. I was just joking. You stumbled over my doorstep Friday night, and it's Tuesday morning. So five days, four nights, really. You've developed quite the bedhead, love."

Arthur already felt a headache forming on top of his other injuries. He was not ready to deal with Eames' humor, or any humor, for that matter. It was hard just to distinguish English from the throbbing of his other injuries. Which, now that Arthur thought about it, felt less like he had been shot and more like he had just taken a particularly bad spill off his bike.

"Eames," Arthur began, shifting as Eames guided him into more of a sitting position, piling pillows behind him with one hand while pushing him up with the other. "Did you give me narcotics?" Arthur asked, ignoring the fact Eames was manhandling him like some helpless kitten.

"I hate to startle you, darling," Eames began, "but you might want to look over your shoulder. Slowly, now." Arthur, brow furrowed, looked over to his left side. Upon seeing nothing, and at Eames' head tilt, he glanced toward his right side. Arthur's gaze screeched to a halt at his right arm. With his palm facing up, an IV line had been haphazardly taped to his wrist. When Arthur traced the line back to the source, he noticed the IV pole with two hanging bags. Well, to be accurate, a coat rack functioning as an IV pole that seemed to be doing a bang-up job. In addition to the first bag with fluid (that Arthur assumed to be morphine), he saw a partially empty bag, the bottom filled with, wait – "Blood, darling. Had to give you a blood transfusion after your little puddles all over my floor," Eames said, casually, like he had just lent Arthur the Sunday paper.

"You remembered my blood type?" Arthur questioned, vaguely shocked that Eames not only had a morphine drip (which wasn't too surprising in itself, Eames could've been a drug dealer in another life), but also knew how to administer blood transfusions – with his own blood.

"Of course. It's A positive, compatible with my humble A negative. I remembered the one time you told me, because A positive makes sense, seeing as how you need to be perfect in all aspects." Eames smiled, some of the easy humor returning to his face. "Now that's all squared away, how are you feeling?"

Arthur shifted under the covers, glad when Eames reached over to pull down some of the suffocating blankets. He was achy, sure, and sudden movements were not his friend at the moment, but Arthur felt much better, all things considered. "Uh," Arthur said eloquently. "Like I jumped out of a five story window, onto a fire escape, with a bullet wound."

"Is it time for a story darling?" Eames asked. Raising one eyebrow, he scooted his chair closer to Arthur's bedside. Giving Arthur another sip of the water from the glass, he leaned back into the worn lounger. Once again crossing his arms over his chest, Eames eyed Arthur critically. Arthur tried in vain to stop blinking so much, resisting the urge to close his eyes entirely. "Or at least a SparkNotes version, love. I'd rather not have the Italian mafia or whomever you fell in with knocking down the door to my mother's house."

"You're mother's house?" Arthur questioned. Suddenly, he was wide awake.