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It’s late when Arthur finally arrives. The pale facade of the house is a looming beacon, too far from the main road to be lit by anything but the thankfully-full moon. Shoving his hands into the lined pockets of his denim jacket, he wishes he had thought to bring a flashlight. And a heavier coat. Jesus, it’s cold.
He hasn’t seen the house itself in the better part of a fifteen years, but he knows it—from the wooden steps creaking in well-worn succession, to the odd brass statuette of a Great Dane stationed under the doorbell, to the awning that still catches the wind in a faint, flat note. The sensation is a stark reminder that familiar does not mean friendly; his neck tenses in a manner that has very little to do with the chill. Nonetheless, each piece helps him to keep his bearings as he hunts down the lockbox the executor had assured him would be clasped around the doorknob. Arthur fumbles to remember and then punch in the code.
“Need a han—”
There’s something to be said for the more recent additions to his muscle memory, too: he’s pinning a heavy body against the wooden siding, one hand cocked back in a fist, before he consciously registers any of it. There are other, brutal steps that typically follow, but whoever it is has their hands raised in surrender.
“A ‘no, thanks’ would have sufficed,” Eames rasps, throat straining against the pressure of Arthur’s forearm. “Maybe even just a ‘no,’ if you were in a hurry.”
“Shit,” Arthur growls. He’s suddenly grateful for the statue, now a convenient brace as he tears himself away. “What are you—have you been following me?”
“I was in the area,” Eames says, primly setting his own jacket to rights.
It’s bullshit, and they both know it. No one is just “in the area,” all the way out here. Idly, Arthur wonders whether Eames is here to kill him. It’s a consideration he makes probably twice a year; as usual, he dismisses it out of hand. There are simpler ways, and plenty of better opportunities. And, despite the usual insinuations, Arthur knows he hasn’t done anything recently that would piss Eames off badly enough to actually want him dead.
Which leaves one other option.
“What do you want, Eames?”
Eames props a shoulder against the wall, arms crossed insouciantly. “This looks rather exciting,” he remarks, as though Arthur hasn’t said anything at all, gesturing to the house at large. Arthur snorts.
“Thanks. I inherited it a few months ago. It needs a lot of rehab. I’m taking some time off while I decide what to do with it.”
“Huh.”
Arthur finally gets the lockbox open, fishing out a ring of keys. There must be a half dozen, their ages ranging across decades. When he goes to pick up the bag he had dropped in their short scuffle, he discovers Eames is already holding it.
“So, as I was trying to ask,” he sighs, “d’you need an extra set of hands?”
Arthur hits him with his best skeptical look. He hopes its effect makes it through the dim. “As I was trying to ask: what do you want, Eames?”
“Now that is an interesting question.” An airy conspiracy laces Eames’ tone and makes Arthur roll his eyes. “And one I can’t actually answer at the moment.”
“What.”
“There are too many variables, just now. But there will be something I may need your assistance on shortly.”
“So this is your way of, what, pre-calling in a favor? Just ask me when you actually have the details.”
“I thought you would appreciate my forward thinking.”
“That’s…kind of stupid.”
Rather than pitching a display of offense, Eames just barks out a laugh. It’s unexpected, and Arthur has to bully his bag back from the man’s grasp to check his own grin.
“Must be a pretty egregious favor,” he murmurs, flicking through the keys. He chances the newest-looking one on the ring, a bet that pays off when the deadbolt slides free with a chnk.
A crooked sliver of teeth widens, catching the blueish light. “Only one way to find out.”
Too late, Arthur realizes the trap he’s walked into: Eames is leveraging the mystery. It’s deeply annoying, because it works— Eames has roped him into more than a few inadvisable jobs on intrigue alone. He looks sidelong at the man who’s flown however many thousands of miles on a gamble, and knows he’s looking in the face of pathetically obvious inevitability.
There’s also the now-open front door, giving way to the oppressive dark of the empty house. It makes its own case.
“Come back tomorrow.”
“Pardon?”
“If you actually want to help,” Arthur says, “come back tomorrow. I’m not going to be able to get anything done until I’ve got some daylight. If you’re ‘in the area,’ that shouldn’t be too hard, right?”
There’s a span of amused silence in which he can hear Eames evaluating him. He just stares blankly back; even if he really does want the man’s help, Arthur isn’t going down without at least some token defiance.
“Fine,” Eames says mildly. “Tomorrow, then. Can you at least turn the porch light on so I don’t stumble to my death on the way out?”
“Mm. Bulb’s dead.” Arthur doesn’t even try the switch, a petty gesture he knows Eames doesn’t miss. “Goodnight, Eames,” he says, and lets the door fall shut.
The morning brings clear skies and sunshine, but no accompanying warmth. Arthur slept like shit; after a long, frigid night of clanking radiators, the heat is first on his list of things to repair. Followed by the tepid-at-best water tank.
He’s almost forgotten about last night’s encounter when Eames materializes at the top of the basement stairs.
“You’ll probably need to bleed the pipes,” he muses. Arthur is so engrossed in his inspection of the boiler’s pressure gauge, he regrets to admit that he startles.
“God , can you not? How did you even get in here?”
“Front door was unlocked.”
“Yeah, sure.” Arthur shuts off the open valve. “Looks like the tank is full. You’re probably right. Damn. There are probably a dozen radiators in this place.”
Eames skips the bit about Arthur admitting he was right, and instead asks, “Does that mean I get a proper tour, then?”
Arthur sighs as he pushes himself to his feet, body aching in a way he’s not used to and doesn’t care for. “Alright, let’s go.”
The house is a two-storey Colonial-style, at least eighty years old. There are four bedrooms total, plus the dining area, kitchen, and sitting room. The walls are stark, with phantom frames left by the paintings Arthur assumes were pawned off in the estate sale. There’s still the sheet-draped furniture, though, apparently lumped in with the property. They linger in each room just long enough for Eames to get the lay of the land; even with the company, Arthur still catches himself grinding his teeth.
“That’s it, I guess,” he says, once they come to the end of the upper floor. He slaps a hand on the mezzanine railing with finality, extending one of the screwdrivers from his belt. Eames takes it absently, eyes fixed skyward.
Following that gaze, Arthur turns to see the hatch. It’s unremarkable, almost invisible where it’s set in on the ceiling, except for a tarnished lock.
“What’s that, then?”
After the subtle wrongness that’s been pestering him since the moment he’d arrived, the sight drops a gnarled pit at the base of Arthur's sternum. It’s disorienting in its intensity, and resists all applications of logic. There’s nothing—and no one—in this house. Even if there were, Arthur is more than capable of handling it. None of that seems to matter; all that remains is animal dread . He muscles it down, and hopes Eames can’t see the hitch of his throat.
“Scuttle attic, I’m pretty sure,” he mutters. “I’ll deal with it later. I can’t imagine how much shit there is to wade through.”
“You say this like it makes it less intriguing. Is it haunted, you think?”
“I’ll deal with it.” It’s firmer than he intends, but Arthur doesn’t walk it back. He’s already exhausted; he's not in the mood to deal with that insistent needling, especially when he doesn’t even have a real answer.
Eames purses his lips, staring up at the trap door, but apparently recalculates. “Righto,” he murmurs. “Well, it’s your house, and ostensibly your ghosts.”
Ultimately, Arthur takes the upstairs; he’s pretty sure they’re past the point where Eames would actually snoop in his home, but he’d prefer to limit the temptation. Bleeding each radiator is slow work, but simple, and Arthur can appreciate the meditative nature of it. By the time he’s through, he’s finally warm with the exertion, at least enough to shed his hoodie. It’ll do in the meantime.
“I’m done up here,” he calls over the banister. “Are we ready to turn it back on?”
He doesn’t get a response; perhaps the dampening effect of these older walls is better than he’d assumed. Eames had seemed to know what he was doing, though, so Arthur imagines the rest of the job is most of the way there.
“Eames?” he tries again, trudging down the stairs. He catches sight of the kitchen radiator, the rag below it saturated with released water. It’s the same story in every other room he checks, but the man himself is nowhere to be found.
But the front door is unlocked again.
Vanished, as swiftly as he’d arrived; the sight stings unaccountably. Arthur has long since come to expect Eames’ lackadaisical nature, but this feels cold, even for him. Why had Eames even come by, if he was so eager to leave at the earliest opportunity?
Whatever. He’d done what he agreed to, and that’s all that matters. In the basement, Arthur cranks the boiler back up to a satisfying hiss, and sets his sights on the water heater.
The next day is warmer, which Arthur attributes to an unexpected front. He takes advantage of it to work on the neglected landscaping. It’s one of his less-favored maintenance tasks, but the scraggly dead bushes along the front walkway really need to go, and the lawn is littered with a confetti of leaves.
He doesn’t hear a car, but he isn’t actually surprised when he looks up to see Eames sauntering to loom over his shoulder.
“Nice of you to join us,” Arthur says, dry.
To his credit, Eames ducks his head diffidently. “Sorry. Got a call I really couldn’t miss.”
“You might have texted or something.”
“I lost reception on my way out, unfortunately.”
It’s…flimsy. Arthur is less perturbed by the quality of the lie than that Eames feels the need for it. The man does what he pleases, as a rule; he hardly has to justify himself to Arthur. Not when the circumstances are already so fucking bizarre.
He doesn’t owe Arthur anything, actually, Arthur reminds himself, to a stab of chagrin. Why does it matter? It doesn’t. God, he needs to get his own weird shit in check before he does something really idiotic.
“I’ll be sure to announce my comings and goings more emphatically from now on,” Eames adds diplomatically.
“Please don’t,” Arthur scoffs. “I don’t want to know what that would entail. Sorry. It’s not a big deal. Thanks for your help. The heat is working again.”
Eames just hums lightly, retrieves the rake from its post against a massive oak, and sets to clearing the lawn.
“So,” he starts, once he’s got a decent pile worked up. “Does anyone else know about your new ends?”
Arthur laughs. “You mean, has anyone else tracked me here like a bloodhound? Nah. I only keep company with one guy that insane.”
“I’m touched.”
“I’m sure. I also called Cobb about it.”
“Really?”
Eames has stopped raking. Peering over the top of the shrub, Arthur can see his calculating stare.
“What?”
With a hard blink, Eames shakes his head. “I—nothing. What did he say?”
“Nothing, yet. I left him a voicemail. I think he’s out of town with the kids.”
“Hm. Interesting.”
Arthur frowns. “Interesting?”
“I just didn’t realize you were in touch, lately.”
The comment has Arthur immediately defensive—Eames had always given him shit about his “perverse loyalty,” back when Cobb was still on the run. But he doesn’t seem judgmental, now. Just legitimately perplexed.
“Hey, I said you were my only friend with your specific brand of crazy. Not my only friend.”
The bemused expression doesn’t totally fade, but it’s disrupted by a crooked little grin; Arthur flushes with the realization of what he hadn’t quite said. He resumes his surgery on the flowerbed.
Eames, too, returns to the task at hand. “I want it on record that my ‘particular brand’ has me out here, toiling away on your front garden. I hope that earns me some points.”
“That you can redeem for god-knows-what.”
Eames waggles his brows provocatively, but doesn’t elaborate.
“I am sorry,” he says softly, a minute or so later. “For disappearing. It won’t happen again.”
Arthur pauses to consider that, studying the soil under his nails.
“It’s okay. I…appreciate you being here in the first place.”
“Of course, love.”
Arthur clears his throat, then reaches out to wrench the base of a shrub, its roots finally sloughing free of the dirt.
“Are you hiding a dead body?”
Arthur nearly drops the lightbulb he’s just extracted from the ceiling fixture. “Excuse me?”
Eames shrugs; the motion shudders up from his hold on the base of the ladder. “I’m just trying to figure out why you haven’t checked the attic yet. It’s been four days. I can keep a secret, you know.”
“I already told you,” Arthur huffs. “It’s gonna be a big job, and it’s nowhere close to my priority right now.”
“You’re not even a little curious?” Eames wheedles as he exchanges Arthur’s burnt-out bulb for a new one. “I’ve already ruled out ghosts. Can’t imagine any lineage you hail from would leave unfinished business behind.”
“Why would I keep a body in the attic for four days? If anything that would leave more evidence, in the long run.”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Can you just—”
The bulb flickers to life the moment Arthur has it in place. It’s instantly blinding; he has to screw his eyes shut against it. It’s…way, way too bright, for a plain old sixty-watt, and leaves an afterimage in shifting hues of violet and green.
“Arthur?”
Eames’ voice is far away, like the light is somehow drowning out the sound. It buzzes, a physical thing around Arthur’s skull; clinging to the ladder, he breathes fast and shallow.
“Bloody— Arthur, get down before you kill yourself!”
Somehow, he finds his way to the ground. It probably has something to do with Eames’ insistent grasp on his calf, and then his arm, the same one that forces him to sit down on the hardwood. When Arthur opens his eyes, the man is kneeling beside him, eyes wide.
“Jesus Christ, mate,” he titters manically, “if you’re trying to deflect, there are less perilous ways.”
“Sorry,” Arthur sighs. He grins wanly, letting his head tip back against the wall. “Desperate measures.”
Eames meets his smile, but there’s something uneasy behind it. “Next time I ask about it, I’ll be sure you’re on solid ground.”
“Or you could just, y’know. Leave it alone.”
That gets him a quirked brow and a chiding look; Arthur had known it would before he ever said it.
“Brontë attic wife?”
“Fuck off.”
“Topside art heist.”
Arthur debates flicking his paintbrush at Eames. The high likelihood of recoil splash quells the urge.
“You nicked a priceless painting off some flash gallery, and you haven’t been able to find a fence.” Eames sighs; he’s somehow able to make his next swipe of the roller melodramatic. “I’m a little hurt you didn’t look me up. Those are both old favorites of mine.”
“I’m not a thief. That kind of thief,” he amends, when Eames makes a high, incredulous noise. “Believe it or not, I try to keep the mortal peril to a minimum. Preferably subconscious.”
“Well, that’s no fun.”
“And anyway, you’ve been on every job I’ve taken in the last year.” Arthur crouches to inspect the tape line on the baseboard with a low grunt. “If I were trying to hide a secret heist, you’d find out about it somehow.”
“You what?”
“You’ve been riding my ass about the stupid attic all week. You don’t let things go.”
Eames plants his roller on the dropcloth like a staff, hanging off the long handle as he regards Arthur. “No, I mean the bit about the jobs.”
“What about it?”
“You’ve worked your last, what, ten gigs with me?”
Leaning an elbow on his knee, Arthur turns to frown up at Eames. “You knew that.”
“Not that they were your only ones.”
“Oh. Well. Yeah.”
As he runs his roller through the tray, Eames puffs a disbelieving breath through his teeth. “You truly are a masochist.”
“Shut up,” Arthur chuckles. “They were good jobs.”
“All of them?”
“Self-deprecation, Mr. Eames? Never thought I’d see the day.”
“No, it’s just…” Eames worries his lips between his teeth, like he’s unsatisfied with the end of the sentence. He schools it into a wry smile. “I’m just trying to parse your baffling logic. From where I’m standing, you’re all sorts of inscrutable, these days.”
Arthur isn’t sure if it’s what he was actually going to say. He doubts it. Setting aside his brush, he retrieves a rag to clean his spattered hands.
“If I didn’t like working with you, there are plenty of other teams.”
Eames’ brows shoot up. “I’ll be reminding you of that whenever you try to turn down my next offer.”
“That totally hinges on whether or not you actually tell me what it is.”
“Quid pro quo, sweetheart.”
Eames winks. Arthur chucks the paint-covered rag at him.
When the cold returns, it announces its arrival deep in Arthur's joints. He maintains that he is not getting sick; if he dedicates a day to his less physically-taxing chores, it’s just because he’s earned it.
Truth be told, he’s running out of pressing repairs. The last several days have been remarkably productive, even with Eames’ constant cajoling. Or, Arthur concedes (silently, to himself), because of it; on the odd day the man hasn’t come by, the hours seem to eke by like molasses, with little to show for them. The idea of calling the job complete summons that shadowy pall, again. He already vaguely hates the end of each visit, when Eames declines the offer to stick around for a beer, or to stay for the night when they work late.
It’s not that Arthur can’t be alone in the house. But when Eames comes by to post up on the antique sofa, being generally unhelpful while Arthur folds the laundry, he doesn’t complain, either.
“Are you keeping a cache of embarrassing childhood photographs?”
“Oh my god.”
Eames grins up at the ceiling. “Surely they wouldn’t sell them. There must be heaps of old family albums up there.”
“Probably.” Arthur chuckles, thin and a tad bitter. “I wouldn’t be in any of them.”
“You can’t have been that embarrassing.”
“Yeah, well this family sure thought so.”
Eames goes silent at that, his rapt attention palpably fixed on Arthur’s face. Waiting. With a hard breath, Arthur gives up on the towel he’s folding to rest his hands in his lap.
Why he feels the need to say it, he isn’t sure. He’s tired of interrogating his every move.
“My parents weren’t married,” he explains, matter-of-fact. “Dad came from money, mom didn’t. He didn’t even know I existed until she died. I was six when some social worker dropped me off with a letter and a suitcase, and threw a wrench in everything.
“He never wanted kids. And their social circle was pretty religious, I guess, so my grandparents kind of held me at arm's length. I spent a lot of time up in that attic, actually.”
“Good lord, are you saying they—”
“It wasn’t a Dickens thing,” Arthur says, waving a conciliatory hand. “Nah, it was just quiet. Out of the way. No one else ever went up there, or asked where I had been. Anyway, I skipped town and enlisted when I was eighteen, and that was that. The next time I set foot in this place was…when did we get in? Two weeks ago?”
“How on earth did you end up back here?”
Arthur shrugs. “I think it was my dad’s version of deathbed amends. Maybe he thought leaving me the family house would ease his conscience. I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“Fuck his conscience.”
The firm clip of it is startling, and wrenches an off-kilter giggle from Arthur. Maybe it’s childish, but it feels good to hear.
“Christ alive, Arthur,” Eames says, “you should have told me from the jump. Of course you wouldn’t want to go…I'm sorry.”
“No, it’s not that. Actually, I liked it up there. It’s probably the one place in this house I actually did like. And I’m over it, anyway. Really. Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it a whole thing.” He scrubs his hands over his face. “Ugh, maybe I am coming down with something. I feel so weird.”
He picks up his towel again, folding it and dropping it in the waiting basket. In the corner of his vision, he can still see Eames’ gaze aimed directly at him.
“Can I ask you something?” Eames props himself up on an elbow. “Something different, I mean.”
Arthur eyes him. “Should the fact that you’re asking to ask concern me?”
“Maybe.” Eames smirks halfheartedly. “It’s just, why are you here? Why would you come back?”
“You’ve seen how much work it needs.”
“You know full well there are people who could take care of that for you. Repair it, sell it, whatever. But you hate this place. Why do you insist on torturing yourself with it?”
“I don’t—”
“Arthur.”
Arthur frowns despondently down at the coffee table. He doesn’t want to talk about this, much for the same reason he doesn’t want to explain his aversion to the attic—he doesn’t know. Every vantage he takes proves opaque to higher reasoning. All he has is a primordial urge, thrumming away at his brain stem. The gravity of the place is all but physical; he can’t leave, any more than he could break the earth’s orbit.
“Closure, I guess. Tying up loose threads.”
When he finally looks Eames in the eye, Arthur can tell he doesn’t believe it, either.
“I don’t understand you,” he murmurs, shaking his head, but lies back down.
“Yeah, well. That makes two of us.”
The full laundry basket is troublingly cumbersome, when Arthur stands to heft it onto his hip. He sets it on the chair for a moment to rally.
And yeah, maybe it’s stupid to ask.
“You wanna just crash here, tonight? It’s fucking freezing. I think it’s going to snow.”
Eames doesn’t seem to think it’s stupid. In fact, there’s a whole span of seconds in which he seems to truly consider it.
But, “I can’t,” he finally says; Arthur thinks that’s real regret.
“There are three open bedrooms. I wouldn’t make you camp out in the living room or anything.”
“Maybe next time.”
Arthur breathes carefully around the strange weight in his throat; he’s not sure how many more excuses he has. Eames doesn’t miss it.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Arthur says. As he makes the short trek to the linen closet, he thinks the basket must weigh a hundred pounds.
When he wakes in the middle of the night, it’s to two things: a pool of sweat saturating the sheets, and a severe pounding on the front door.
Getting up is a herculean trial. He braces one hand on the wall the whole journey to the foyer, a deep, throbbing ache wracking his bones with every step. He’s both surprised and not to open the door to Eames, and the frantic glint in his eye. He’s panting.
“Are you alright?”
“I’ve been better.” Arthur steps back to beckon Eames inside, but his legs seem to have met their quota for standing. Eames intervenes before he can hit the floor, hoisting Arthur’s arm over his shoulders.
“I can see that.”
“Which is why I’d like to go back to bed,” Arthur mutters, “if that’s alright with you.”
“This isn’t good,” Eames growls under his breath, once they’ve made it back to Arthur’s room. He dumps Arthur inelegantly on the swath of bed that’s not entirely soaked.
“I can see that,” Arthur parrots. “Why are you here?”
“I had a feeling.”
It takes energy to coordinate his muscles into a frown, but Arthur manages it. The movement makes him realize just how much his head is killing him.
“This sucks.” He groans raggedly. “How did I get sick? I haven’t hung out with anyone but you in…a while. Fuck.”
“Darling,” Eames calls, and then again, louder, “Darling. Look at me please.” Arthur hadn’t realized he had closed his eyes, but he lets them slit open. The faint glow of the bedside lamp flares with a crystalline aura.
There’s a long, deliberating pause in which Eames studies him. Whatever he sees must lead him to some decision that he isn’t thrilled about.
“Arthur,” he says, measured. “How long has it been since you’ve left this house?”
“I’ll go see a doctor in the morning if—”
“No. I need you to think about it. When’s the last time you saw anyone other than me? Went anywhere else?”
“I…” Arthur’s brow knits painfully deeper. “It can’t have been that long.”
“Did Cobb ever call you back?”
Something molten-hot drips into Arthur’s gut, cutting through the paradoxical chill everywhere else. No. He hadn’t even thought about it.
“What’s your point?”
Eames shuts his eyes, breathes deep.
“It’s time to open the attic.”
No. No.
“What are you talking about?”
“Please. I need you to trust me.”
Arthur is determined to tell him to fuck off, let him sleep, but the words don’t materialize. Something about that tremulous—but still sure—tone hits him with the preternatural certainty that’s accompanied all the other untraceable impulses since he arrived. They fit together in a way he doesn’t understand at all, but feels real, tangible all the same.
“Okay,” he whispers. “Can you—I need your help.”
With Eames fixed tight against his side, keyring in hand, they make the grueling ascent to the top of the stairs. Somewhere in a minute Arthur loses inside his own head, Eames retrieves the ladder, propping it under the hatch. When he passes Arthur the keys, Arthur doesn’t have to guess at which one it is; a brass skeleton, standing out by feeling as much as sight. It’s weighty. Eames gives him a sympathetic look, but ushers him to the ladder.
“How many attics have you seen that have locks?” Eames asks, as Arthur turns the key.
“It’s…a weird house.” Not good enough, he knows, but the question was rhetorical, anyway. With too much effort, he pushes the trap door until it lands sonorously open.
The attic looks very much like he’d expected, at least from what he can see in the limited light from below. It’s finished, but dusty with its long abandonment, cluttered with boxes in varying stages of wear. Arthur settles beside a stack of them to regroup while Eames follows him up, shutting the hatch behind them and clicking on the exposed pendant lamp hanging from the high, A-frame ceiling.
“We’re here.” Arthur throws his hand out in a wordless question.
Eames comes back to take a knee beside him. He shakes his head. Runs a palm over his mouth. “Do you remember our last job?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Tell me.”
“Nairobi,” Arthur huffs. “Manufacturing client.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“I—yeah. The mark was militarized. He woke up too soon, and we had to…”
“Think, Arthur. What happened when we got kicked out?”
“We booked it. I drove, it was…” Arthur slams his eyes shut in the wake of another bolt of searing pain. “Man, what do you want?”
“I’m sorry, love, but please follow me. Do you remember coming here?”
And Arthur does. He must. It hasn’t been long at all. He had come straight here, once the job had gone to shit. It was off the grid, and. And.
The earliest moment that comes to mind is that first night, and Eames’ unannounced arrival on his doorstep.
“What are you saying?”
Eames doesn’t answer him. He just looks over Arthur’s shoulder, to the far end of the room. It takes everything in Arthur to turn.
There, in front of the old bay window where he had once whiled away so many afternoons, is an incongruous hospital bed. It’s made-up and sterile, draped in long shadows as Arthur forces himself to approach it. Tonight's a new moon; no light streams from outside.
“Eames?” His voice is brittle.
“Try to remember.”
“I am. You…oh fuck, you’re bleeding.”
Behind him, Eames is lingering at a distance, as though stopped by an invisible line. He’s inordinately calm, in light of the alarming gash on his forehead. It looks superficial, but cascades his temple with bright blood.
“You are, too,” he says softly.
Arthur wants to protest, but feels a warm prickle running down his neck. When he goes to swipe at it, his fingers come back red; it’s coming from his ear, thin but steady. He can taste it, too—a stifling congestion assaults his sinuses.
“It’s okay, darling. It’s alright.”
Arthur doesn’t even want an explanation, anymore; he just wants to be rid of this sudden, profound loneliness. It’s the same as he’s felt every time Eames has bid him goodnight, multiplied by orders of magnitude. All he knows is that Eames makes it better. He's made all of it better.
“Please come here,” he begs, and doesn’t care how pathetic it sounds. “I need you to be here.”
“I’m sorry,” Eames says grimly. “I’ll see you, I will. But you’ve got to do this bit on your own.”
“I can’t, Eames.” He collapses into the bedrail, muscle tone swiftly abandoning him. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You’re strong. You're the strongest bastard I've even known. You can.”
“Eames.”
“Lie down, Arthur.”
“Please,” Arthur hisses through gritted teeth, but there’s no one to hear it. The attic is empty in a blink, leaving nothing but the bed, himself, and an overwhelming ringing that sounds like oblivion.
He heaves himself onto the bed, staining the sheets with an already-oxidizing red handprint. It’s the best he can do before the blackness overtakes him.
“Looks like his eyes are opening. Did it work?”
“Fucksake, yes, give him the bloody painkillers!”
“Sorry, sorry. Pushing them now.”
An unknown stretch of time passes before a light is shining directly into one eye, then the other, accompanied by a hand on his face. Arthur squints, but when he goes to slap them away, he finds his arm weighed down with an absurd mess of tubing.
The next thing Arthur registers is the excruciating pain, specifically how he’s still in it. It is, however, just beginning to drain away. His gaze catches on a syringe, before he refocuses to the man holding it.
“Welcome back,” he says. The figure both sounds and looks suspiciously like Yusuf, down to the pleasant lilt and reading glasses.
“Where have I been?” Arthur’s throat is on fire, his voice pitifully broken.
“In a remarkably well-appointed corner of my atelier.” Yusuf checks a monitor at the head of the bed. Its readout is apparently satisfactory. “Though I suspect you’ve also been very far away, indeed, if what Mr. Eames says is true.”
“Eames?”
“Right here,” says another familiar voice.
As he continues to parse the competing sensations, he finds his other forearm clasped in a large hand. It is, blessedly, Eames, though he looks more like the battered version of a few minutes ago than the one who’s kept Arthur company these last several days.
“You look like shit,” Arthur croaks.
The sound that punches out of Eames is distressingly difficult to identify as a laugh or a sob. It’s rough, wet. “You look dashing as always,” he lies.
A telltale strap is fixed around his wrist, a meager complement to Arthur’s own tangle of wires. Arthur flips his hand over to nudge it with a weak curl of his fingers.
“How long?” he asks.
“About two weeks,” Yusuf interjects.
“That’s…real time?”
“It seems the time dilation went squiffy. You had your bell pretty well rung. I’m dying to ask you about it, but I think Eames would murder me.”
“Good instincts,” Eames scoffs.
“Thank you,” Arthur says. He has plenty of questions of his own, to be pinned for a later, less-maimed date.
“Of course,” Yusuf says. “Everything looks good for now. I’ll be back to check on you in a bit. Keep the talking to a minimum, if you can. We extubated you not all that long ago.”
Arthur blinks slowly, resisting the urge to let his eyes stay closed. The relief has already suffused most of his body; he fleetingly wonders what exactly Yusuf had given him. Whatever the specific cocktail, it’s definitely the good stuff.
Eames has taken it upon himself to remove their PASIV cannulas and banish the case to the far corner of the room. He stands there, hands fixed on his hips, in a posture so tense Arthur vaguely worries he’s about to pull a muscle.
“Water?”
It’s enough to bring Eames back; he snaps to action, stepping aside to conjure a plastic bottle from some source Arthur can’t see. He sets up the incline of the bed before cracking the the bottle open and cautiously bringing it to Arthur’s lips. Arthur wants to take it for himself, but his limbs prove uncooperative. Even in his addled state, the moment strikes him as unfathomably intimate.
“Was it the car?” he asks, when Eames finally sets the water aside. He doesn’t elaborate. Eames understands, anyway.
“...Yes.” Dropping into the bedside chair, he looks like a marionette with its strings cut. “I should have driven. I knew the streets better.”
“You were busy. Shooting.”
“Still.”
“Shut up.”
Eames grunts and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. Now that he's closer, Arthur can see the splotchy redness of his complexion. There’s a faint scar on his forehead, too, apparently the aftermath of hasty stitches.
“Tell me.” Arthur tries to make it sound more like a request than a demand. Eames visibly steels himself.
“Coma, as near as we can figure. Your vitals were alright, but you just wouldn’t wake. Fortunately, we deal in sleep.” He snorts humorlessly. “We tried a lot of things, but it was the morphine, ultimately. Or the lack thereof, there at the end. Sorry about that.”
“You. For two weeks?”
Full of some unnamed significance, Eames’ eyes meet his. “Of course. You were…rebuilding.”
It's probably his limited cognition talking, but it makes shocking sense. Or at least explains some of the stranger phenomena. The researcher in him wants to chase it down—technically, neurologically, perhaps psychoanalytically—but there are more pressing matters. He stretches his hand across the chasm of the bed; Eames meets him in the middle, taking it in both of his own.
“I’m sorry it was so miserable,” he says. “That place.”
Arthur shakes his head. “Not with you,” he breathes, annunciating as carefully as he can. “Thank you. I needed you.”
And maybe it’s too intense—he has little capacity for nuance, right now. What’s important is that it’s true, and he needs Eames to know. Its effect is immediate, judging by the labored way he swallows. He lifts Arthur’s palm to his lips.
“Told you I would need you, too, eventually,” he murmurs.
In the ensuing, comfortable silence, Eames kneads each of Arthur's fingers, gently flexing them at the knuckles. It feels disproportionately amazing, and it occurs to Arthur that he hasn’t used them in a while.
“What now?” he asks.
“Well.” Eames blows out a loud breath, rocking his head equivocally. “The atrophy is going to be your biggest hurdle, since you couldn’t be arsed to get out of bed for weeks. And Yusuf will still have to make sure there isn’t any lingering damage. It’ll be slow going. You can’t let it discourage you.”
Arthur manages to smile, just the tiniest quirk at the corner of his mouth. “Sounds like a lot of hard work.”
Weary though it is, Eames grins too. Rising to lean over the bed, he gingerly presses a kiss to Arthur’s unkempt hairline.
“You know I’m good for it.”