Work Text:
Arthur prepares for the job the only way he can, through persistence and professionalism, treating Eames like any other colleague. He dresses up every day, laced up as he can manage, though it's impossible to forget that Eames had seen him in his teenage awkwardness, had stripped soft t-shirts and worn jeans off his frame, and kissed all the places he was self-conscious about.
He drinks the coffee Eames brings him, made the way he likes it, with too much sugar, a habit he hadn't managed to shake from when he was a teenager and disgusted by the taste of coffee but still insistent on drinking it. If anyone else asks, he drinks it black, and suffers through the taste, but Eames brings it just right, and Arthur hates that he remembers.
He tries to let the familiarity of Eames roll off him, tries to respond to Eames with cool, distanced politeness and nothing else. He thinks he's doing a pretty good job.
*
Of course, he slips up, because Eames is like that, draws everyone into his glee, his charisma. "I do not have a name," Eames is saying from across the room, cheerfully fending off a question from Mal. "I am a nameless man, an apparition."
"His name is Charles," Arthur calls out, can't help himself.
"You've grown evil in your old age," Eames tells him, affecting a wounded look.
"I'm not the one on the hard end of thirty," Arthur says, snide. He has to resist the urge to stick his tongue out, like he had done as a teenager, rejoicing every time he'd gotten in a blow against Eames.
Mal attempts to break them up with a laughed out, "children, children," and a smile, but it starts again, Eames saying, "there's only one child in the room," and Arthur serving him a middle finger and a sweet "and only one person who likes the fuck children."
Eventually, she gives them up with a huff, and they grin at one another, conspiratorial. When Arthur goes back to work, it's with a smile that's slow to fade.
*
As they get closer to the job, the strangeness eases, a bit, becomes less overwhelming, and Eames is like any other co-worker Arthur has had in the past few months, except charming and razor sharp and a man Arthur used to be in love with.
So really, the strangeness doesn't ease at all, but Arthur gets better at pretending it has, pretending it's fine to have Eames perch on the edge of his desk and explain his part in the whole thing.
Eames is explaining how he's managed to figure out the mark so easily with only cursory study, how he's managed to slip under the skin of the mark's wife with as much ease, and it's surprising, how well he has them figured out, though he was in psychology when Arthur met him, and it only makes sense for him to be versed in it. But then, Eames is a liar, and Arthur doesn't know if he was really a student at all, or if that's in a list of false credentials.
"Were you even a master's student?" Arthur asks, not looking up from his work.
"Well, no," Eames says, sounding rueful.
Arthur looks up at him, raises an eyebrow.
"SAS. Joint program with your military. Some deep cover work," Eames says.
"So when you were too busy with thesis work to see me—"
"That's confidential," Eames says, quick, then graces him with a smile that feels fake, feels pawned.
And that's just it, that's what is getting under his skin and refusing to let go, because Arthur had thrown himself into something, and it turns out that all of it was cover, that everything about it was a bald-faced lie.
"Was anything you told me real?" Arthur asks, and is mortified when his voice won't stay steady.
"You were the most real thing I ever had," Eames says, and he sounds honest, but then, he always had. They look at one another for a moment, and Arthur can't read anything from his face, can't tell anymore if he's lying, is unsure if he ever could.
"I should let you get back to work," Eames says, finally. He leaves, and Arthur stares blankly at the laptop in front of him for ten minutes before he can remember what he was working on.
*
Arthur gets through the weeks through pure force of will, and it's worth it, feels worth it, when Eames slips him a smile as they're going under, and Arthur can remind himself that when it's over, Eames will go back to wherever he came from, and stop reminding Arthur of who he used to be.
The job goes perfectly, Eames acting the professional under, playing the part of the mark's wife with an ease only weeks of tracking and practice had afforded him. He manages to trick the location of a cache of guns stolen from a rival gang out of him with time left to spare.
Arthur's relieved by all of it, the money that will be wired to his account for him to spend on strengthening his connections to the dream-share world, renting out apartments and paying for flights and dinners spent wooing potential architects, chemists to replace Mal when she drops into some sort of impromptu maternity leave. He's relieved that once this is over he can get back to moving on with his life, something he'd been working at for five years, and had done a fairly admirable job of until Eames had shown up.
Of course, the job goes wrong as soon as they come up. Arthur had misjudged how long it would be before the mark's security team would come through, and they get into an impromptu gun fight, Arthur managing to drop one of the men following them before he gets shot in the belly. Eames shoots the other, and tucks them back into the dark of an alley as soon as it's safe to stop.
"Dom and Mal?" Arthur asks, as Eames helps him sit down, pulls Arthur's jacket away to look at the wound. He pretends he doesn't notice the wince Eames pulls.
"Got off clean," Eames says. "We were the ones followed."
Arthur nods, and it feels off, dim. There's only a lone street light illuminating them, and Arthur can feel the blood sliding out of him, darkening the pavement. For some reason, he isn't scared.
"I went to Oxford," Arthur tells him, doesn't know why he says it. He can feel blood on his lips, internal bleeding, someplace deep and vulnerable.
"I know," Eames says, quiet. "I checked up on you, sometimes."
"You never visited," Arthur says.
"It didn't seem like a good idea," Eames says, and his voice is all wrong. "Arthur, I'm not a good person."
"I know," Arthur says, though that's a lie. There's a stubborn part of him that won't believe that. "I always knew that. For god's sake, you slept with a sixteen year old."
"He misinformed me of his age," Eames says, sounding offended, the way he always had when Arthur brought it up. Eames has a hand on Arthur's stomach, dripping red and holding Arthur's blood inside his body, and Arthur remembers being sixteen and curious what being with a man would be like, remembers Eames spinning him around a dance floor at seventeen, showing him exactly what he could be, and fuck the room full of eyes on him.
"You're a pervert," Arthur says, and against his will, it comes out fond.
"So you always said," Eames says, brushing Arthur's hair back from where strands have fallen loose across his forehead. He's done it a hundred times before, slid his hand through Arthur's hair when it was loose and unrestrained, and Arthur looked at him with the eyes of a boy in love.
His chest feels tight, and it's more than the sharp, clenching pain of the wound, more like the last five years disappearing, and him looking at Eames with the same eyes he'd looked at him with before.
"Kiss me," he says quietly, and Eames, beautiful Eames, obliges him as he always has.
The moment ends up being cut short by Arthur turning his head to cough up blood, and Eames bundles him into a car, drives like a lunatic until they find a door that looks like any other, a door Eames helps him through.
The bullet is dug out of the meat of Arthur's stomach by some guy with a medical degree and a sense of discretion, someone Eames knows, and Eames keeps his hand tight in Arthur's, allows Arthur to squeeze through the pain, though he must be close to breaking his fingers.
"This is not where you should be," Eames says, quiet, as Arthur grits his teeth through the scalpel and the slick of blood.
"Oh?" Arthur asks, "and where should I be?"
"Somewhere safe," Eames says, and Arthur squeezes his eyes shut as the doctor extracts the bullet, waits for the painkillers to kick in.
"I wouldn't be anywhere else," he mumbles, when he can feel the fuzz beginning. He means every word he says.