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Eames leaves on a Tuesday.
*
Arthur finds out Eames is leaving on a day he doesn't remember, a day that runs slow and idyllic through his brain, a day with spring melting into the first of summer, Arthur newly freed from school and exultant with it. They're been sitting in a park, Eames' head pillowed on Arthur's lap, and Arthur is idly tugging at the grass when Eames says, voice low, "I leave in a few weeks."
Arthur isn't stupid; Eames had finished his thesis defense earlier, just before he'd taken Arthur to prom, and his summer has started the same as Arthur's has. Arthur had known he was going to leave. Except there's this small, stupid part of him that had thought that somehow Eames would stay.
"So I guess we make the most of it, huh?" Arthur says. "That's what romance movies have taught me."
He tries for light, but it comes out a little melancholy.
"Arthur," Eames says, and he looks so serious that Arthur has to kiss it off him, because it looks all wrong on his face.
*
They make the most of it, or at least they try, and if there are fewer romantic, meaningful outings, like romance movies suggest, and more time between the sheets, Arthur's lip caught between his teeth, well, Arthur thinks it's honestly a better use of their time.
They make the most of it, but time slides forward, faster than Arthur's really prepared for, and then it's the last night, Arthur's parents taking pity on him and allowing to stay over, pretending that it's some sort of sleepover instead of what it is.
Eames is slow to undress Arthur that night, and Arthur loses patience quickly, pulls his half unbuttoned shirt over his head in one long motion, pushing his hair into disarray. Arthur serves Eames a challenging look, but Eames only ruffles Arthur's hair, looking almost unbearably fond.
And it stays slow despite his efforts, Eames' hands lingering like he's memorizing him, and it shifts it into something Arthur doesn't think he can handle.
"Are you making love to me?" Arthur asks, when Eames is shifting in him, slow roll of hips, mouth an inch from Arthur's so they're sharing breath.
Eames looks shifty. "No?" he tries.
Arthur digs his heel into the small of Eames' back. "I am not a breakable virgin," he snaps.
"I'm well aware," Eames says, keeping still.
"If you don't stop acting like this, motherfucker, I am going to ride you until you scream," Arthur informs him.
"That is not an effective deterrent," Eames says, but he moves, and now it isn't the hesitant, slow roll of hips, but something Arthur's a little more used to.
Arthur tells himself that's a relief.
*
They don't sleep that night, just faces one another, talking. Their conversation moves in circles until they've run out of anything to say, and eventually they just lie there, sharing a pillow and sharing breath.
*
Arthur drives him to the airport the next afternoon with a newly acquired driver's license. Eames had tried to give him a lesson once, but he'd given hastily snapped out, nervous instructions, growing steadily more agitated until Arthur had to pull over to the side of the road and assure him he wasn't actually trying to murder them both. Arthur, in the aftermath, hired an instructor.
"This is goodbye, then," Arthur says, at the departures gate. He'd parked, followed Eames into the airport, but there isn't really anything else to delay this moment barring buying a ticket and following him to London. Arthur doesn't think his parents would approve. And anyway, he hadn't brought his passport.
"There is a thing called the internet," Eames says. "And I could get a phone card. Technology is a beautiful thing."
Arthur shakes his head. He's never felt so young or so old at this moment, because he knows this is it, that he's a child, and Eames isn't, and that there's nothing in this that is remarkable, that no matter how in love he is, it would never last the distance. "This is goodbye," he repeats, and he can't quite keep his voice from shaking.
"Oh darling," Eames says, and pulls Arthur in, Arthur's chin tucking over his shoulder. "If you start crying, I'm going to have to call you an emotional teenager. And you'll kill me, and then where will we be?"
Arthur laughs wetly into his throat.
Eames pulls back. "You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he says, quiet, and that is goodbye.
*
Eames wakes Arthur in the middle of the night with a phone call. Arthur picks up, drowsy.
"I'm home," Eames says, voice quiet exhausted, strung out.
Arthur pretends the word home doesn't hit him like a blow to the chest.
"You sound exhausted," Arthur says, filtered through a yawn of his own.
"I am," Eames says, and there's this tone to his voice Arthur can't figure out, is too tired to figure out.
"Go get some sleep," Arthur says.
"Yes," Eames says, then after a moment, "yes," and Arthur hangs up and spends another night sleepless, watching the blur of his ceiling through half-shut eyes.
That's the last time they speak on the phone.
Eames sends emails, though, long testaments of the colourful array of characters he seems to draw to him like a magnet, and Arthur sends back missives of the drudgery of the suburbs without Eames to steal him away from boredom like a thief in the night.
Eventually though, the emails become less and less common, and by the time Arthur's thrown himself into a new school year, busy with the threat of university hanging over him, they've trickled to a stop.
Even so, when Arthur applies to colleges, Oxford is the first on his list. It's a silly, stupid thing, but there's this part of him, tucked small and curled up in his stomach, that doesn't want to let go.
He gets in.