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We’ve been doing it for years.
Teasing each other, pulling each other’s strings. Hurting each other, deliberately or not.
*
I remember that one time when I found him on his girlfriend’s porch, trembling, smoking a cigarette.
"It’s the end of the world. The end of the world is coming, right? It’s getting closer." He looks at me from where he’s crouching, those dark curls around his pale, young face, brown eyes full of tears.
Damn it, he’s so young and yet so broken.
"The world is ending, isn’t it, Eames? And we can do nothing to stop it."
His wiry, warm body is shaking violently when I sit on the floor next to him and hold him, trying to protect him from everything. My hands get tangled up in his hair, his fingers tuck on my shirt and I’m not telling him the world is not really ending, because that’s something I’m not sure of myself.
And I won’t lie to Arthur. Not ever.
I remember that one time on the porch of his girlfriend, a girl I introduced to him, an old friend of mine. I remember my shirt got all wet from his tears about the end of the world and I remember how I felt back there.
Something has clicked. Something has changed.
*
For Arthur, I would even die.
We keep seeing each other too often, we are working together and one day we find ourselves in Moscow, tired from running, struggling to breathe and he drops his gun to the floor. Years have passed and he doesn’t fear the end of the world anymore. Now, he’s living it.
He’s been taking enough pills to make the panic disappear from his eyes, which are now filled with professional calmness and rationality. His dark hair is slicked back. Expensive suits and leather shoes complete the façade he’s created for himself.
The gun falls to the hotel room floor. I follow him to the bathroom and watch him spray his face with tap water. Our gazes meet in the mirror.
It’s a rush of blood to the head.
It’s a dam, breaking with a crash.
Louder than the sirens outside, quieter than a heartbeat.
It’s two seconds and I am pinned to the wall, Arthur’s impatient hands all over my body, his breath on my cheek.
I seize his lips and feel the shock going through him.
The kiss is wild. It seems like the wildest thing I’ve ever done. Bathroom tiles hear our little, shameless moans. Arthur’s fingers get caught up between the buttons of my shirt. I can taste the pain of past years on our tongues and it’s the closest to crying I’ve been in a long time.
He whispers my name, pulling away slightly.
"Eames…"
His eyes are dark, darker than night, yearning.
I leave him there, in the bathroom, and lock myself in my hotel room, jerking off viciously for hours.
*
He thinks I’m strong.
He knows I can gamble all night, drinking Johnny Walker and flirting with long-legged blondes, he knows I can shoot with no mercy and then run, no turning back, he knows many other things I wish he didn’t.
Like I crumble when he’s near.
Like I fail to control myself.
Like I’m the best friend he never had, and will never have.
What Arthur doesn’t know is that, in reality, he’s a lot stronger than me.
*
That day, I was hurt.
It doesn’t happen to me very often, but it’s in the job description. The bullet went through my upper arm, shredding skin and flesh. My vision has gone black for a moment, earth slipped from underneath my feet and then we were escaping like nothing else mattered, not the job, not Cobb and his security rules, nothing else but our escape, because it was the truth.
I remember, it’s my flat in London and Arthur throws away his tie, which he used to stop the blood flowing from my wound. He treats me with alcohol and a clean bandage, calm and still and quiet and professional, even though his shirt is covered in my blood and I can pass out any minute.
Arthur wants to give me painkillers. I refuse.
A lock of dark hair lands on his forehead and I hear him breathing sharply, collar undone, cuffs dirty.
"I’m too tired for all that, Arthur," I say, though I’m not sure I know. I’m not sure I know what I mean.
"Yeah. Me too."
He climbs into my lap and a tiny, hysterical laugh escapes his mouth. This is absurd.
I kiss him, hard, to stop thinking about it. Digging my nails into his shoulder blades. Tugging his shirt off. Feeling him lose the fucking composure at last. It’s high time.
I’m desperate. We’re both desperate and blind, and both in pain, in our own ways.
And this is it, that helpless connection of bodies, lips, tongues, hands, two people raised for perpetual war with the world.
"We are never going to work this out," I whisper.
"I don’t care," says Arthur, his hair a mess, but his eyes burning.
"I don’t care," he says, and he means it.
That day, we make love for the first time.
We soak the sheets with blood and sweat.
In the end, we’re both crying.
We’ve destroyed everything.
*
His girlfriend is a charming person. An old friend. I like her a lot.
The fact that I feel like killing her doesn’t help at all.
"Hey there, Eames! Long time no see." She hugs me, smelling of expensive perfume, her silky blond hair all over my face. I’m staying just for a few days, Arthur and Dom and I discussing a job. She’s a quiet little thing, getting out of my way even though I never asked her to, her face tired, like she’s had enough, like she really doesn’t give a damn.
And I don’t believe her, I don’t believe her at all.
There’s Led Zeppelin playing in the background, a ghost of a touch of Arthur’s fingers on my wrist and in a moment I have him pinned to a doorframe, my tongue between his teeth, useless words stuck at the back of his throat, arms thrown loosely around my neck.
Sucking the moment dry.
Baby, baby, I don’t wanna leave you, I ain’t joking, woman, I got to ramble. Really got to ramble.
I can hear it calling me the way it used to do, I can hear it calling me back home.
We kiss passionately between the hall and the dining room, not concerned whether she sees it or not.
We became soulless, empty. What we have for each other burned out everything else.
She does see it, although she pretends otherwise. Shrugs, takes a deep breath and walks away, to busy herself in arranging the books on a shelf.
Arthur doesn’t talk to her about it.
*
It’s Dom Cobb, showing his teeth in a giant smile, who tells me that Arthur is getting married. I’m invited. I laugh in Dom’s face and fight the urge to punch him.
"You can send them my regards."
At night, I can’t sleep. The images of past years keep on haunting me.
Dozens of cities. Dozens of hotels. Dozens of jobs done right, and a few that went horribly wrong.
Every word he’s ever said to me.
A mourning dance of my subconscious.
*
It’s another year, gone and forgotten. I’ve lost touch with Cobb and his team. It’s Arthur who I meet during a job in Australia. An empty parking lot, a dream turned sideways, a scar on my upper left arm.
I’m hidden behind a wall, watching him silently. Fighting a man with a gun. Swift as always, taking more than he can deal with - as always. And as always, he manages to succeed anyway.
He likes it, he adores it, he needs it like he needs air.
Putting his life at risk. Playing with death.
He needs it the same way I do.
I’m telling myself I didn’t make him this way. I don’t know whether I’m lying to myself or not.
He fires one winning shot, turns around and sees me.
"Well hello there, Mr. Eames."
His smile is wide and honest. He’s beaming.
I search for a wedding band on his finger, and I can’t find it.
*
In the evening we go out for a drink. We don’t talk, he just stares at me and downs his whisky. Then he stares some more.
"How’s it been?" he asks finally.
"Awful. It’s been fucking awful, Arthur. You?"
"Pretty much the same."
There it is, some kind of longing I can’t recognize, a dark, lonesome look I forgot ever existed. I try to cover his hand with mine and he gets up quickly, startled.
"Let’s just… See you tomorrow, okay? I need some sleep," and just like that he bolts off, leaving me with an unfinished drink and music roaring around.
I don’t even bother trying to fall asleep. Flicking through the channels of my hotel room TV, it’s either porn or game shows or music videos or porn.
About 3 o’clock into the night my phone calls. It’s Arthur.
I hit Answer and remain silent.
"Okay, Eames, that’s it, I’ve had enough. Enough of your bullshit. You got me lost and don’t even dare to try and convince me otherwise."
"Arthur…"
"No, shut up and listen. I’ve tried, alright? But it was useless, all of it. I didn’t get married, we broke up ten months ago, six years like they didn’t mean a damn thing, and now… Oh fuck it, fuck it, fuck you, you messed me up."
"Arthur, please…"
"What?" He almost screams. It’s so unlike him.
"I’m in 203."
"Fuck you."
I put the phone back on the bedside table and notice that my hands are shaking. I get up and I’m about to run from my room, search the entire hotel to find him, but there’s a knock on my door.
I fling them open and Arthur doesn’t even look at me, he grabs me by the hand and drags straight to bed.
It feels like coming back home.
I would die for him. I would protect him from everything in the world that is out to get him. I would cry tears of joy and pain just because I am so in love with him.
We are drowning between white sheets.
We make thousands of wordless promises.
Later I tell him, "Tonight, at the bar, was the last time I ever let you get away from me."
Arthur kisses me on the forehead, gently.
"Okay," he says. And that’s enough.
*
We are armed to the teeth, but they are too. That deep within a dream, a mistake might send us flying into eternal nowhere.
Arthur’s next to me. His muscles of steel, sharp, focused eyes, fearless mind.
I take a little moment to steal him a kiss. His lips part softly, his arms welcome me.
This time, we have a home to come back to. This time, there is a purpose. A method in the madness.
As for now, we are Arthur and Eames at the edge of the world.
Today might be the day of my birth, or my funeral as well.
But I’m not afraid. Arthur’s got my back.
"Let’s give’em hell, shall we, Mr. Eames?"
"Let’s."