Work Text:
Arthur arrives at Oxford in the first blush of fall. It's an entirely new world to him, and he settles in a dorm with a roommate who talks too much, talks too fast for Arthur to follow, when he's trying to clutch every new experience into his chest.
He hasn't said a word to Eames in six months. There'd been the essay long emails, but they'd slowed to fractured sentences, and Arthur had never told him about Oxford, not applying nor getting in, because it was a far off thing, a fantasy. Arthur hasn't seen Eames in more than a year, and he's not stupid enough to think being in the same country will return things to how they were. They've been apart longer than they ever were together.
But there's the part of Arthur that is a romantic, that still clutches on, and that takes him down to London on his first free weekend, an address Eames had given him, early on, saying Arthur could absolutely feel free to send any naked photos he might take, and Arthur had laughed at it, as he thinks was the point.
The point wasn't him wandering about London, ringing a bell and finding no answer. He hangs about the house with his hands in his pockets, because that was the only plan he'd had, and now he has nothing else to do but wait.
When he hears approaching footsteps, he melts into the line of brick, instinct forcing him small and hidden, though he isn't quite sure why. It explains itself, though, when Eames walks up with company, a woman with long, shiny red hair, and Eames' hand planted firm in the small of her back like ownership.
Arthur doesn't stick around, takes the next train back, and stares at the ceiling of his dorm while his roommate chatters about something, tries hard not to cry, because there were no promises made, he'd asked for no promises to be made, and he's the only one at fault for the snapping of a dim romantic hope.
He throws himself into work after that, like he'd come to Oxford to excel instead of follow the last traces of a relationship, like every silly child who thinks teenage romance will last forever. He hates that he was one of them, so he excels.
He meets Dominic Cobb in his third year, has been picked as someone who could work with him, and within six months Dom has him building rooms around them. He meets Mal as a projection first, slim and elegant and beautiful, and then meets her again three months later with a shiny ring around her finger. She's as beautiful as Dom dreams her as, and Arthur could fall in love with her, might have, if he hadn't learned already to guard his heart.
Dom teaches him how to steal into other's minds without leaving a trace, and Arthur never finishes his final year, never graduates, because he's busy running after Dom and Mal, traipsing across dreams and the globe, helping them steal secrets. Most of their jobs are legal, but a growing number of them aren't, and when they find a job that needs a thief, a con man, what Dom calls a forger, Arthur just nods along and sends tendrils out on a network he's shakily establishing around himself.
Mal's the one who finds him, assures them she's found the perfect man, and Arthur comes into work on his twenty-second birthday not expecting to find Eames in the space of the warehouse, grown older, broad, looking more like a fighter than anything Arthur had known him as. That doesn't make it any less him.
Eames is grinning at something Mal is saying, sharp and bright, but his face freezes when he turns and sees Arthur.
Arthur's heart is in his throat, but he manages to stay still when Eames walks over to him, hand reaching out to Arthur's wrist, grip tight.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Eames says, and his voice isn't even. "What the fuck are you in this business for?"
"Let go of me," Arthur says, low. There's a tattoo visible beneath the open collar of Eames' shirt that he hadn't had when he was Arthur. Arthur looks at him, a thief, apparently, a con man, and he doesn't think he knows him at all.
"Arthur," Eames says. "Christ, you should be in school."
"I'm not a child anymore, Mr. Eames," Arthur says, with all the dignity he can muster, and wrenches his wrist from Eames' grip, walks away.
Mal finds him ten minutes later, corners him. She's newly married, flush with the beginning of the shape of a daughter, and she's taken Arthur under her wing in the meantime, alternately making sure he's getting enough vegetables and making sure he gets laid. It's terrifying, but a little comforting nonetheless.
"Relative?" she asks.
"Ex," Arthur says, short.
"He's got ten years on you," she says, disbelieving.
"Eight," Arthur says. "I was sixteen."
She looks hard at him for a moment. "We don't have to work with him," she says.
"Is he good at what he does?" Arthur asks.
"The best," she says, sounding reluctant about it.
"Then we have to work with him," Arthur says, and gets back to work.
It's a long day, a day of pretending Eames isn't just beyond the corner of his eye, talking to Dom, to Mal, working out who he'll pretend to be. Arthur looks up the mark's financial history and can't believe he missed something as blinding as the fact his first love was, apparently, a man who made his life out of lies.
By the end of the day, Arthur is ready to go home and celebrate his birthday with a bottle of wine and the most depressing film he can find. He's ready to stiffen his shoulders and remember the fact he was a silly, idealistic teenager, and that if he'd come to England for Eames, at the very least, he'd found the Cobbs, and he hadn't had his teenage love affair deflated until he was old enough to know the world didn't hand out people like the man Eames had appeared as.
He's packing up when he feels heat against his shoulder, turns his head enough to look at the barrel of Eames' chest, the breadth of him.
"Happy birthday," Eames says, low, and deposits a worn handkerchief onto Arthur's desk. It's his, a gift from Mal when he'd started picking out suits for himself, an affectation. Eames must have stolen it from Arthur's pocket, and all that's attached to it is a note pinned to its centre, Eames' curled handwriting saying, Remember your seventeenth?
On Arthur's seventeenth birthday, Eames had bought him seventeen cupcakes, and they'd eaten them on Eames' bed, since he didn't have a table. They'd gotten crumbs all over the sheets, and eaten until they could barely move, lured by colourful icing.
Eames had laid sticky fingers all over Arthur, and Arthur had woken up the next morning with icing in the curve of his hip, hardened in his hair. It'd been the best birthday Arthur had ever had.
Despite himself, Arthur pockets the note with his handkerchief, and once Eames leaves, he allows himself a smile.