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Two days after the end of the Fischer job, Arthur drives Ariadne to the airport. She’s flying back to Paris, and some protective impulse in him wants to make sure she gets safely on the plane.
There was another impulse as well, not at all as altruistic: Eames was still in his bed when he left to meet Ariadne in the lobby. Eames’ marks are still on his body. Arthur needed a bit of space to mull the development over. Battling traffic on the 105 seemed like a welcome distraction.
Besides, he likes Ariadne. He can’t help it. He likes that she saw through Dom within hours of meeting him, but still doesn't quite see through Arthur. It's nice having someone who buys into his tiny subterfuges.
“I still can’t believe it’s over,” Ariadne says – should you excuse the phrase – dreamily, as they shuffle closer to security.
Arthur nods. “Hell of a job, especially for a newbie.”
She snorts. “Piss off.”
He smiles at her. “You did good. Scratch that, you were better than anything we could have expected.”
She beams a little under the praise, before saying contemplatively, “It’s going to be weird, going back.”
He nudges her shoulder. “Don’t think of it as going back. You’re going forward.”
Ariadne rolls her eyes. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Sorry, kid,” Arthur says, heavy with sarcasm. Apparently, the protective impulse isn’t being received too well.
The security line moves slowly forward. Ariadne kicks her luggage into the unoccupied space ahead of them, then looks around at the hectic, choreographed chaos that is LAX at half past eight in the morning. “Is it always going to be this weird, now? Reality, I mean.”
Arthur smiles, shrugs. “Pretty much. It’s the other reason people carry totems around.”
Ariadne cocks her head. “I don’t get it.”
Arthur puts his hands in his pockets, leans back on his heels, trying to articulate it. He feels fatigued suddenly, trying to put it in words. “It’s a way to tell for sure if you’re dreaming. But it’s also, a reminder that even when something feels like a dream, there’s consequences in reality. Does that make sense?”
“Not really.”
“Yeah, I’m exhausted.” Eames had kept him awake for far too long. Jesus. “So forgive me if I don’t actually sound sane.”
Ariadne smiles at him. “I've already forgiven you for that.”
Arthur’s stuck in traffic. He’s been moving in inches over the past fifteen minutes. The lanes are locked solid. Fate has intervened to block him in.
If he’s not careful, he could turn this into a metaphor. Arthur turns up the volume on the stereo instead, singing softly under his breath.
Arthur is well-known for his ability to plan ahead, to have multiple contingencies and backups. He failed spectacularly on this job, being forced instead to improvise. He blames multiple things: the time crunch, Dom’s insanity, working with unknown factors in the form of Yusuf and Ariadne and Saito, Eames being his usual competent asshole self, Arthur’s own desire to just get this thing over with so Dom could stop being such a sad, bitter bastard and go home to his kids.
And then it was over. Arthur was sitting in the bar, nursing a Bloody Mary because that was the only thing they served before noon, when it hit him: he had no idea what he was doing next.
And then, like some infernal vision, Eames sat down at the bar next to him.
An hour later, they were kissing in the backseat of a cab.
Arthur’s still not exactly clear on how that happened.
He has even less of a clue on what do now. He almost hopes that Eames will be gone when he gets back. Then he will be able to write this whole thing off. One night stand. No big deal. It’s not like they’ve had a certain tension simmering between them for years, a graceful push-and-pull dynamic that’s flowed from one job to the next, year to year.
“That’s a lie,” Arthur admits out loud, the words lost in the music and the rush of the wind from the open window.
He kind of wishes that he were dreaming, that he could turn the highway into a möbius strip and keep driving until some real plan formulated in his brain.
“I’m at a loose end,” he says to nobody. It’s a long-standing habit Arthur has, talking to himself when he’s alone in the car. “I fucking hate loose ends.”
***
Eames is awake when Arthur gets back to the hotel room, but only just.
“Ariadne safely on her way?” he asks, eyes half open.
Arthur nods. All the blinds in the largest bedroom have been pulled shut, but the morning sunlight filters in around the edges, giving the room a strange kind of dimness that clarifies certain details. Arthur can make out the white crescents of Eames’ fingernails, the bitemark on his neck.
“Take off your clothes and get back in bed, then,” Eames says, tugging at Arthur’s pants. Arthur’s too tired, his brain deadlocked with fatigue and the feeling of the ground eroding from beneath him, to argue. He slips out of his shirt, pants, and jacket, and slides between the blessedly cool sheets. He falls asleep with Eames’ large hand carding absently through his hair.
He wakes up to Eames blowing him sometime in the afternoon.
“What are you – oh fuck, Eames–”
Eames mumbles something around Arthur’s cock. Good morning, it sounds like.
Arthur runs his hands through Eames hair, thrusting into the wet heat of his mouth. When was the last time he woke up to sex? When was the last time he didn’t wake up in a haze of determination just to get through the morning, the day, the job, the clean-up, the getaway?
Eames pinches one of Arthur’s nipples, rolling it between his fingers, presses his other hand against Arthur’s ass: not penetrating, just rubbing, sliding a fingertip against the sensitive skin. It makes Arthur arch off the bed. Of course, Eames has already figured out Arthur’s most sensitive areas.
It feels like defeat, coming so quickly, so loudly, and so fucking hard that Arthur’s toes curl. The feeling doesn’t abate at the sight of Eames’s shit-eating, triumphant grin.
“You looked like you needed that,” he says.
“Yeah?” Arthur says. He wants to say something that will slice through Eames’ self-satisfaction, but 99% of his vocabulary has abandoned him.
“Yeah.” Eames flops onto his back, the wrong way on the bed, his feet on one of the pillows near Arthur’s head. “What do you say we order a ton of food and booze on room service?”
Arthur blinks. “Metric or imperial?”
“Whatever one is heavier,” Eames replies.
***
“So, what is this going to mean exactly?” Arthur can’t help but ask. He’s been picking at his food, too tired and wound up to feel hungry, but has managed to finish off three glasses of an overpriced Pinot Grigio. He already knows that this isn’t the wisest choice, but like much of the last few days, he seems to be in some sort of fatalistic free fall. Fate blocking him in.
“The sex?” Eames asks, and shrugs. “It can mean whatever you like it to mean. I’m not trying to force a definition on you.”
Arthur sets down his glass. “This ‘que sera’ attitude. Is it just a cover for being a coward? Or do you really feel like that?”
“All I’m saying is, I try not to read too much into things,” Eames says with a shrug, pointedly not rising to the bait.
Arthur wants a fight. He wants the familiar battle, instead of this new terrifying whatever-it-is, Eames being calm and understanding and sexy even when he's pissing Arthur off. “You try– oh please. Give me a fucking break.”
Eames cocks his head. “Sorry?”
Arthur puts down his fork. “You take the tiniest things and read an enormous amount of meaning into them, the smallest gesture–” (the image of Eames practicing taking off his glasses as Peter Browning springs, completely unbidden, to Arthur’s mind) “–and forge an entire identity based on it.”
“Maybe, but I never tell myself that a gesture is anything more than that,” Eames says, the patronizing bastard. He’s still talking in that annoying “let’s be reasonable” voice, but there’s an edge to it now. “It might be sincere, but it’s still a very small thing overall.”
There are too many possible meanings that could be read into Eames' statement. Arthur decides to choose the worst one and run with it. Before his better instincts can talk him out of it, Arthur drains the rest of his wine, and flings the empty glass past Eames head to shatter on the wall.
Eames’ reaction is everything he could have possibly wanted: the calmness melting into shock erupting into fury. “What the fuck, Arthur?!” he shouts. “What the bloody hell was that?”
“A gesture,” Arthur replies calmly, then picks up his jacket and walks out of the room. Thank fuck he insisted on getting dressed before eating.
His triumph lasts all of four seconds after the door closes. Eames, obviously not reading that this is a cue for him to back the fuck off, yanks open the door and tears after him.
“Arthur–” he starts.
“Fuck off, Mr. Eames.”
“Would you listen for a bloody second–”
“To what? You already explained that this is just some kind of 'gesture' and I’m 'reading too much into it.' Fine. Message received.”
Eames gets a grip on his shoulder and whirls Arthur around. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
Arthur gets a forearm across Eames' chest and slams him into the wall. “They were your words,” he hisses.
This, precisely, is why this was always going to be a terrible idea. Eames has a way of making Arthur lose his hard-won control over himself, over his worst impulses. It’s nothing Arthur can pinpoint, just some special ability that Eames has always possessed, from their earliest days of working together.
“Maybe, but you’ve completely misinterpreted them,” Eames says, not struggling against Arthur at all, just using their nearness to make Arthur feel stripped bare. Again.
“Bullshit,” Arthur sneers, and releases him. He’s about to leave, but for some reason happens to look down the hall at the room they’ve both just run out of. Spots of blood, pressed into the cream-colored carpet, catch his eye. He follows the trail to Eames’ feet. and sees dark flecks of blood on the gray socks.
“What?” Eames barks.
“You’re bleeding.”
Eames looks down for a moment, then back up at Arthur. “Yes. Well, some prick broke a glass in our room and didn’t stop to clean it up.”
“So you stepped on it?”
“The same prick then stormed out like a hormonal teenage girl. I didn’t have time to sweep it up.”
All the self-righteous fury goes out of Arthur, and he slumps against the wall, overwhelmed. “What the fuck is going on?” he mutters, scrubbing his face with his hand.
Eames is still glaring at him. “As far as I can tell, we’re two assholes who haven’t the first idea how to communicate like real adults.”
Arthur wishes he still had friends, the way Dom and Mal used to be before everything went to utter shit. He wishes that Ariadne hadn’t left, and could act as a peacemaker. He needs someone to talk to, to interpret his own bizarre life for him.
“Agreed,” Arthur says, eyes darting up to Eames’ face and then back down the hall towards the room they’ve just stormed out of. “Come on, let’s look at your foot.”
***
Arthur grabs the first aid kit out of his bag and, after a moment of hesitation, the bottle of Maker’s Mark from the duty-free in the airport. He spares a glance at the mess of broken glass still strewn over the carpet, almost stops to clean it, then keeps moving towards the bathroom.
Eames is sitting on the toilet, gingerly trying to remove his socks, swearing under his breath.
“Hands off,” Arthur orders, and is surprised when Eames obeys him without remark. The pain must have finally hit him. Arthur opens the bottle of whiskey, takes a swallow before passing it over to Eames. With the bourbon burning down his esophagus, calming his nerves, Arthur kneels down and pulls on a pair of latex gloves.
“Where were you going to go, when you stormed out in that spectacular huff?” Eames asks.
“I hadn’t really planned any further than the dramatic exit,” Arthur says truthfully. Eames takes a swallow of whiskey in the ensuing silence
“Were you going to go to Cobb’s?” he asks, his tone too casual to be anything but serious.
Arthur looks at him, and realizes that Eames’ self-defenses are as wrecked as his own. "Probably not," he answers truthfully.
Arthur pulls a pair of scissors out of the kit and cuts through Eames’ socks, peeling them away from the pale skin of his feet and inspecting the damage. The right is mostly fine, one small cut and no glass stuck to the skin. The left has more damage; a shallow but messy cut on the ball of the foot, and a large shard embedded in the arch, blood dribbling out around the edges. It must hurt like a bastard, Arthur thinks, and is going to bleed a lot when he pulls out the shard. He decides to deal with it first.
“Are you still planning on leaving?” Eames asks. There’s no emotion invested in his voice. He could be talking about the weather in Hong Kong or the price of milk in New Zealand. Arthur is starting to pick up on the fact that this tone is a deflection of how much Eames actually cares about the answer.
“Maybe,” Arthur says. He picks up the tweezers and looks at the blood-stained glass sticking out of Eames’ foot. The implications of Eames walking across broken glass to stop Arthur from leaving are overwhelming on a number of levels. It makes the impulse to bug out and run away even harder to ignore.
Arthur gets a grip on the shard and pulls it out. Eames grunts, hits the wall with the back of his head. Arthur presses a piece of gauze down. Eames swears in three different languages, before taking a large gulp of the whiskey.
Arthur was right: it does bleed a lot.
“Arthur,” Eames says. He’s a bit pale, with a sheen of sweat on his upper lip.
Something about his tone makes Arthur’s stomach do a slow, lazy roll. Get out, his instincts shout at him. This is dangerous, so get the fuck out. It takes more effort than it should to override them.
He swallows and looks up at Eames, who’s regarding him with a serious look. “What?” he says, ignoring the way his mouth has gone dry, the way he can feel the heat radiating off of Eames’ thighs, Eames’ pulse beneath his fingers, where he’s pressing gauze down.
“Are you leaving because I said some silly thing about gestures, that you misinterpreted completely?” Eames asks.
“You’re an ass,” Arthur says, switching out the gauze, which is soaked through with blood. “And not entirely. This is just– this is a bad idea.”
“This?”
“Us. It’ll end badly.”
“How do you know?” Eames says, challenging him. “You’re talented, Arthur, but you’re not psychic.”
“It always ends badly.”
“It doesn’t have to,” Eames insists.
Arthur avoids his eyes, checking the wound instead. The flow of blood has almost stopped.
“Stay the night,” Eames says, leaning forward, close enough for Arthur to smell his skin and whiskey-tinged breath. “Leave in the morning, if you still want to.”
This is a terrible idea. Arthur knows it, knows it like he knows that it’s gravity keeping his feet on the tiled bathroom floor, a heavy and trusted instinct. He should walk away right now.
Instead he nods. “All right,” he says. Then, because he can never keep his control around Eames, Arthur puts a hand on his thigh and leans up to kiss him.
***
Arthur leaves early the next morning, dawn barely breaking through the deep indigo of the sky. He slips silently out of the bed, maneuvering himself out of the conjoined tangle of his and Eames’ limbs. He showers briefly, gets dressed, and grabs his bag. His hand is on the door when he hears Eames’ voice.
“Bye, darling,” he says.
Arthur turns. Eames’ eyes are open, regarding him warmly – invitingly – from the bed. He’s leaning up on his elbows; hair messed, eyes heavy-lidded, parted lips hinting at a smile. Arthur can barely make out a bite-mark on his throat, and feels a jolt run through his gut and thighs as he remembers the exact circumstances of how it got there.
“See you later, Mr. Eames.”
“You certainly will,” Eames replies softly, as Arthur lets himself out.
Arthur has a renovated cabin in northern Maine that nobody knows about, the safest of his safe houses. It’s on twenty-five acres of second-generation woodland, bisected by stone fences that predate the Revolutionary War. It’s far removed from any main roads, and is inaccessible in the winter except by snowshoe. It’s barely accessible now, in late April, with the potholed roads buried under three inches of mud.
Arthur comes here whenever he’s on the edge of a breakdown. The quiet does him good.
The problem, he’s decided, is that his carefully ordered view of the world – that on any close examination was insane, but necessarily so – has completely broken down since the Fischer job.
He realizes this while chopping wood. It’s still cool in this part of the world, with frost tinging the green buds on the trees some nights. Arthur concentrates on perfecting the swing, the arc of the axe, and meditates on the small satisfaction of watching the log split in two mostly-even halves.
See, before Mal died, Arthur was a partner to both of the Cobbs. The three of them made an excellent, almost unbeatable team. Then Mal died, terribly and suddenly, and it was like someone had kicked the legs out from under Arthur’s world. It all went to shit so quickly, too. One month, they were having barbecues in the Cobbs’ backyard in Santa Rosa; the next, Mal was dead, Dom was insane and broken and wanted for her murder, and Arthur... Arthur was running as hard as he could just to keep from getting pulled under. Now, he’s treading water. Floating. Marooned.
He tosses each piece of wood in a pile on the far end of the shed. It would be better to stack them properly, but he’s not in the mood for that kind of mindless labor. He places another chunk of maple on the stump, swings the axe, feels it split evenly.
It’s been three and a half weeks since the Fischer job ended. He’s sent Dom three emails. Dom has sent him one. It contained a picture of him and the kids, and the suggestion that Dom needs to stay in this reality for a while, away from dreams and those that deal in them. It’s cloaked in gentle West Coast psychobabble, but still tastes like rejection. The worst is that Arthur was expecting this, and it still stings like a slap in the face.
He throws the two pieces in the growing pile with a little more force than necessary. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and puts another piece of wood on the chopping block.
He hasn’t heard from Eames either. Not that he really expected to.
“Liar,” he says. Another one of Arthur’s longstanding habits: talking to himself during chores. He’s more honest with himself when his monologue is external, anyway.
One clean, hard swing and the two halves of the log drop to the ground. Arthur’s bending to pick them up when the security alarm goes off, a red light blinking in the corner of the shed.
Arthur sighs and sets the axe down. Probably just a stoned hiker or out-of-season hunter, nothing to get excited about. Still, it could be an assassin, which would be a nice diversion. Arthur hangs up his axe and jogs over to the century-old barn; the old bell tower makes an excellent sniper’s perch.
***
It takes Arthur a few seconds to believe that it’s actually Eames walking up his quarter-mile long driveway. He’s wearing a slicker, but the hood is thrown back, the rain running in rivulets down his face. He’s got mud splattered up nearly to his chest, and – as far as Arthur can tell in the rifle scope – is swearing vociferously.
Just for the hell of it, Arthur fires off a shot well over Eames’ head. Eames ducks and rolls behind a pine tree, and Arthur loses him for a second. When he finds him again, Eames is waving an honest-to-god white flag. Arthur briefly considers putting a bullet through it, just to make a point, but decides against it.
“What are you doing here?” Arthur says when Eames finally tromps up to the front walkway. Arthur is standing in the doorway, arms crossed, wanting Eames to know that he’s only coming inside when Arthur damn well decides he can.
“You know, this is going beyond ‘rustic charm’ and straight into backwoods loony territory.”
“Don’t make me regret not shooting you,” Arthur says. “What do you want?”
“I have a proposition for you,” Eames says, blinking rain out of his eyes.
“You should have emailed me.” Arthur stands to one side, allowing him entrance.
“Or gotten four-wheel drive. These roads are worse than Zimbabwe’s,” Eames says as he comes inside.
“I’ll get you a towel,” Arthur says, and shuts the door behind them.
He grabs one from the bathroom and tosses it to Eames, who’s stripping off his muddy outer layers in the entryway, then goes into the kitchen. He grabs the kettle and starts to fill it; even to the most unwanted guest, he can’t be a bad host. He blames his mother for that one.
“How did you find this place?” Arthur asks, setting it on a burner. “Not even Dom knows about it.”
He’s not sure why he mentions this last part. Dom always respected Arthur’s boundaries, probably because Arthur had placed so very few of them on their relationship. Which, of course, is probably the real source of his frustrations with the man.
“Dom would shit himself just trying to navigate this far from civilization. I can’t believe you own property where the local dialect is so actively offensive to the human ear.” Eames comes out of the foyer wearing only a t-shirt and the blue towel that Arthur had given him. His hair is still damp, tendrils clinging to his forehead and neck.
“I like the quiet,” Arthur says, turning back to the tea. “And people respect privacy.”
“Yes, well, you seem to enjoy shooting trespassers. I’d respect your privacy too,”
Arthur looks at him over his shoulder.
“And yet here I am, I know,” Eames says as he wanders off into the living room. Arthur has to bite back a childish command for Eames not to touch anything.
“Jesus, can you actually play this thing?” Eames exclaims from the other room.
Arthur leans over to see around the doorjamb. Eames is running his hands over Arthur’s upright piano. “It came with the house,” he says. It’s half a lie. The piano did come with the cabin, but it’s not just for show. If it was, Arthur wouldn’t have paid thousands of dollars to restore the old Schimmel.
“I suppose all this sheet music did too,” Eames says. “And those guitars in the corner. Is that a mandolin?”
“Do you want this tea or not?” Arthur may impose the need to be a host on himself, but he doesn’t bother trying to make himself be a gracious one. Not for Eames, at any rate.
Eames saunters back into the kitchen. “Yes, please. Milk and sugar, if you have it in your frontier cabin.”
The physicality of Eames’ presence is disconcerting in person. He seems to take up such a tremendous amount of space, just leaning up against the doorframe.
Maybe it’s just because he’s not used to having anyone invade this place, Arthur reasons while sliding the mug of tea across the granite counter. He’s used to being here alone, used to being alone full-stop. Alone or with Dom; sometimes the two conditions practically amounted to the same thing.
Eames comes forward and sits in one of the creaky wooden stools. Arthur remains standing, feeling better with this slight physical advantage over Eames, ridiculous as that is.
“This is Maine,” Arthur points out, while Eames blows on his tea to cool it. “Hardly the frontier, you know.”
“The gas station I stopped at certainly seemed to be populated with savages.”
Arthur scoffs, disgusted. “Drop the delicate colonialist act, Eames. I know it’s bullshit.”
“Only if you stop looking at me like I’m a poisonous snake that just crawled into your sleeping bag,” Eames shoots back.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Don’t you be ridiculous. I know you’re only standing there because the kitchen knives are in easy reach.”
Arthur narrows his eyes at Eames, purposely not looking at the knife block, a foot or so away from his left hand. He really hadn’t done that on purpose. Not consciously, anyway.
Eames sighs. “Come on. I’m not that frightening, am I?”
He is. He really is. How does Eames not know that?
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Arthur turns and opens a drawer, makes a show of rummaging in it for his pack of cigarettes. “What’s this proposition anyway? The one that was apparently too important to email me for?”
“I’ve a job offer for you.”
Arthur turns back, lighting his cigarette. “You risked getting shot to offer me work?”
“Well, I was fairly sure you’d hit me somewhere non-lethal. And we both know that you’re ace at bandaging my wounds.”
Arthur feels something hot and electric pulse through his nerves, remembering the smell of blood and Maker’s Mark, the intimacy of a hotel bathroom, the tacky feeling of Eames’ blood underneath a gauze pad. Remembering what came after it.
“Not interested,” Arthur says. “The job, I mean. I don’t need it.”
He expects Eames to argue with him, badger him into taking it, or at least demand Arthur’s reasons for refusing.
Instead, he shrugs and says, “Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it?”
“I’ll live with the disappointment,” Eames says nonchalantly. “You’re not the only point man in the world. Just the best.”
Arthur is still looking at Eames, who is still sitting and calmly sipping his tea. For someone who has braved rain, mud, the local rednecks, and Arthur’s sniper rifle just to get turned down, he seems remarkably unconcerned.
“That’s all?” Arthur asks. “Question’s answered, you’re going to leave?”
Eames does look up at that. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but if the rain keeps up this way, we’re going to have to turn this cabin into Noah’s ark.”
Arthur can’t quite keep the smile off his lips, so he takes a long drag of his cigarette.
“Unless you’re planning on ejecting me back into the wet by force?” Eames asks.
Arthur exhales a cloud of smoke. “I was considering it,” he admits.
“Never known you to hesitate before. I must be growing on you.”
Arthur flicks cigarette ash in the sink. “Don’t count on it.”
Eames shrugs, all innocence; but they both know he’s a gambler by nature. If a challenge presents itself, he’ll never hesitate to go all in. “Can you actually play the piano?” he asks.
“Studied it for twelve years,” Arthur replies. “Considered going into a conservatory when I realized –”
“That you had a higher calling in the world of crime?”
“That I hate working with musicians,” Arthur corrects, just to see Eames laugh. “Tortured, self-indulgent artists.”
“And yet–”
“I know, I partnered up with Dom and Mal. We always go back to what we know.”
“Not always,” Eames murmurs, taking a sip of tea. “Will you indulge me in playing a song?”
Arthur grumbles his assent. If he’s playing music, at least he won’t have to try and keep making conversation.
Eames follows him into the living room, stealing Arthur’s cigarette and sprawling across the couch in the corner. Arthur sits down at the bench, shaking out his hands, trying to think of something to play.
With an inward shrug, he starts playing Cole Porter. What the hell, he figures. He’s not up to digging up the sheet music for anything too impressive.
“Seriously?” Eames asks, laughing. “You’ve been sitting in your cabin for the last three and a half weeks, chopping wood and carrying water and playing ‘Anything Goes’? What the hell kind of existentialist crisis is that?”
“Who said anything about an existentialist crisis?” Arthur asks, half-turning to give Eames a withering glare. “But if you prefer...” Arthur hunches his back and switches to ‘Moonlight Sonata’.
“Oh god. Please no. I may slit my wrists.”
“If you do, go outside to die. It’s a pain in the ass to get blood out of hardwood floors.”
“Arthur, I swear by all the saints and sinners I’ve ever forged, I will kill both of us if you don’t play something else. Please.”
Arthur abruptly switches to the opening of “Don’t Stop Believing”, just to be an asshole.
“This is not making me reconsider any thoughts of violence,” Eames shouts over the music, which Arthur is playing loud enough to rattle the windows.
“Come on, doesn’t this remind you of your wild teenage years?”
“It reminds me of drunk boys on their stag nights. I’m never asking you to play for me again.”
Arthur suddenly segues into a different song, one that he learned by heart when he was sixteen.
Eames listens for a moment before saying, “Sounds familiar.”
“Recognize it?” Arthur asks.
“Not quite. What is it?”
“‘Comptine d’un autre été: L’aprés-midi’. It’s Yann Tierson, from the soundtrack for Amélie.”
Arthur is unaware that Eames has gotten off the couch until he appears next to him, at the piano bench. He flinches a little, misses a note.
“Keep going,” Eames says, sitting down next to Arthur.
Arthur loved this song when he was a teenager. It’s a deceptively simple song, but evocative. He’d taught it to himself after watching the movie, playing it on the keyboard he’d kept in his bedroom at his parents’ house.
“What is that, something about another summer?”
“Nursery rhyme of another summer.”
Eames hums contemplatively, nodding his head along to the music.
The song is short, over quickly. Arthur lets the last note ring out through the quiet house, then takes his hands off the piano.
He’s aware of Eames sitting next to him, the breadth and expanse of his body, the damp warmth of his skin.
“Are we doing John Cage now? 4’33”?”
Arthur half-smiles, then nods. He takes his watch off of his wrist and sets it on the piano, where they can both watch the second hand.
The most distinct sound in the house is the rain on the metal roof; sharp and crystalline, each drop is distinguishable when one is listening for it. Fainter, Arthur can hear the rain hitting the windows, the wooden walls, and the porch outside.
Closer by, Arthur can hear the refrigerator humming, the radiator clanking as it reluctantly exhales hot air. His watch, ticking away the seconds, dividing time into something a regular, measured rhythm.
A gust of wind moans, and the house creaks; a conversation between the storm and the old timbers in the roof.
Next to him, Eames is breathing softly through his nose. Every so often, he takes a deeper breath, lets it out slowly, and pauses for an extra second before inhaling again.
A dog barks.
Arthur listens to his heart beating in his chest; he imagines, for a moment, that he can hear Eames’ pulse beating in a counter-rhythm.
A loon calls from the nearby lake, wild and mournful. Arthur sucks in a breath at the noise, hears Eames do the same.
At four minutes and thirty-three seconds, Eames says, “I can see why you like it up here.”
At four minutes and thirty-six seconds, Arthur kisses him.
We can't go back, Arthur tells himself. We can only go forward.
Eames kisses him back eagerly, as if in agreement.