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Eames comes into their bedroom with fresh pieces of cake and insists that they watch Arthur’s speech off the DVR in their bedroom until he’s tired of it. Which turns out to be so much endless rewinding and replaying that even Arthur grows immune to being embarrassed by it and curls up on Eames’s chest and just lets him keep watching it while he checks the situation on Twitter.
Twitter starts off in a state of confusion. What happened to Alec’s eye? #nextbigthing #arthur4everything and then *Arthur* did that to him? That’s got to be a joke, right? #arthur4everything? and I knew Arthur would punch his smug face sooner or later. #arthur4everything #damnstraight and It should be wrong that I find it hot that Arthur punched him, right? VIOLENCE IS WRONG. #arthur4makingeverythingsexy and …This stupid reality show is the best soap opera I have ever watched. Seriously. I need this show to never end. #arthur4everything #arthur4eva and Fuck you, Alec Hart, Arthur’s not really a designer? At least he’s not wearing a stupid fedora #arthur4everything
And then the show moves into his interview, and at first the tweets are all about his clothing. Is he wearing a *sweater*? #arthur4everything and I thought I was obsessed with Arthur’s suits and then he showed up in a sweater. #reevaluatingmyfantasy #bothcanihaveboth #arthur4everything and What the hell, does he make everything look like walking, talking sex? #arthur4everything #killmenow and FORGET ABOUT PUNCHING ALEC, THE REAL DANGER OF ARTHUR IS HOW HE’S GOING TO KILL ALL OF US WITH SEXY #arthur4everything and wriugw;gu;aiublg;gbRBYLBRNANnathiunl, #arthurinasweater #arthur4everything.
And then the tweets turn into mostly Oh. My. God. #arthur4everything
Arthur scrolls through varieties of OMGs and OMFGs and hopes that these are positive exclamations. Finally the tweets start to coalesce into whole sentences again.
Where do they sell Arthurs? Can I buy myself one? Ugh, he kills me #arthur4everything
#arthur4bestspeechontvthisyear #arthur4everything
#arthur4bestspeechEVER #arthur4everything
I CANNOT WITH THE WAY THESE TWO LOVE EACH OTHER. I CANNOT EVEN. #arthur4everything #arthurloveseames
Arthur, bb, you are not difficult and unpleasant. DON’T LISTEN TO THE MEAN PEOPLE. #arthur4everything
Arthur just made it impossible for me to ever find a boyfriend because none of them will ever make a speech like that. #arthur4everything arthur4unreasonabledatingexpectations
Aww, Arthur, don’t look so sad :( Eames loves you back, go find him so we can see the dimples again :) #arthur4everything
I can’t even complain how he doesn’t belong to me because LOOK HOW HAPPY THE MAN HE BELONGS TO MAKES HIM OMG #arthur4everything
@Eamesnotthechair If you don’t marry Arthur, I will. #arthur4everything
Arthur takes a deep breath and steadies himself by glancing up at the television. “He’s so ridiculously giving and generous and kind and he doesn’t deserve a single bad word said about him,” says his onscreen self.
Not terribly steadying.
Arthur looks back at the tweets, which wander into speculation. All variations of What do you think Alec said about Eames???? #arthur4everything
Arthur scrolls past them, registering the point where he opens the envelope, because the tweets turn into things like Did he just open the envelope? Ha! Look at Alec’s face! #arthur4everything and #arthur4everything #arthur4justopeningthedamnenvelopelikeafuckingboss
And then everything devolves into #ARTHUR4EVERYTHING #ARTHUR4EAMES
Arthur, curious, clicks on the #arthur4eames tag, and it’s characterized by a large number of tweeted photos of him and Eames on “Love It or List It,” either grinning at each other or else Arthur looking dubious as Eames cajoles him. Arthur’s seen most of them before, because Arthur’s always been a little bit of an Internet stalker of his own relationship, but it’s nice to see them again, like coming across familiar faces.
And there are a couple of tweets with fanfiction recommendations and Arthur backs out of the tag quickly because he doesn’t want to give Eames any room to maneuver down that path. Eames would start writing his own. Eames would make Arthur fucking edit it. Arthur would sit and edit narratives about himself having sex with his boyfriend. It would be madness.
“What’s Twitter saying?” Eames asks, startling him.
“Have you watched that enough?” Arthur counters. “Can we move on and watch the rest of the episode now?”
Eames has his own phone out. “Look how many marriage proposals you’ve got, darling. Well, in case I don’t want you.”
“Yeah, I’m contemplating their dowry situations now.”
Eames chuckles and says, “I’ve read that fic about us, too.”
“Oh, my God,” says Arthur, “I was just thinking how you need to stop that, it’s weird.”
“You were thinking about sexy stories about us? Pray tell what those might be.” Eames leers at him.
“A super sexy story where we watched a whole episode of our television show together and then we have pretty enthusiastic sex.”
“That’s never going to be a popular story, darling,” Eames informs him authoritatively. “You need to describe the sex more explicitly than that.”
“Explicit description of sex is all you’re going to be getting if you don’t stop talking about fanfiction about us,” Arthur warns him.
“You’re so cute when you’re saying things you don’t mean,” Eames grins at him. “Here’s a compromise for you.”
Arthur lifts an eyebrow at him.
“I will stop talking about fanfiction and actually let us watch the rest of the episode.”
“Good compromise,” says Arthur.
“That wasn’t actually a compromise, I just gave you everything you wanted,” Eames points out.
“I’ll pretend to be a hot shepherd for you later,” says Arthur drily, commandeering the remote control from Eames.
“Be still my heart,” says Eames.
The show is in the designing portion, and there is the usual drama between the contestants, which Arthur isn’t interested in at all. He knows that Eames likes hearing the contestants’ design processes, though, so he watches patiently. Halfway through the designing, Mal informs all of them that it will be blind judging.
“Makes sense,” says one of the contestants bitterly, “because otherwise Arthur just votes for Ariadne all the time. They’re probably sleeping together.”
“Oh, Christ,” says Arthur, rolling his eyes.
Eames is tapping away on his phone.
“What are you doing?” Arthur asks, shifting so he can see.
“Tweeting,” says Eames, and Arthur reads his tweet. We’re watching on a delay, but just fyi, there is only one incredibly sexy designer Arthur is sleeping with. #arthur4everything
Arthur snorts and pulls out his phone and retweets Eames’s tweet and adds LRT To clarify, that designer is @Eamesnotthechair
On the show, one of the contestants is complaining that she won’t be able to defend her design in person. This causes a lot of debate among the contestants as to how much design ought to speak for itself.
“Eames said last challenge that it’s all about selling the story,” one of the contestants points out. “How are we going to do that if we’re not there?”
“Hmm,” muses Eames, and tweets Design is a delicate balance between you nudging it along and letting the design speak for itself. You’ve got to be ready to do both.
“Look at you,” Arthur comments. “You’re like the wise old tree in the forest.”
“Except not old,” says Eames, “and also capable of tweeting, which trees aren’t.”
Onscreen the judging starts.
Arthur tracks it through the tweets, scrolling part the ones that are having rapturous fits over his polka-dotted shirt (although it is a nice shirt, so he’s happy about that). Mal left in all of Alec’s snide asides, keeping them punctuated with the most hilarious impassive look on Eames’s face.
Twitter loves Eames’s face, too. “Look,” Arthur says, holding his phone up, “you’re a reaction gif. That’s usually me.”
“Oh, delightful,” Eames says. “Of course they choose to make me a reaction gif when I look the most like how you usually look.”
“Ha,” Arthur says, and reads a tweet out loud, “Eames’s unimpressed look is almost as good as Arthur’s. Let’s have a face-off.” He holds the phone up again. “They’re doing a poll. Let’s vote.”
Eames regards the two photos, reads, “Retweet for Arthur, like for Eames.”
“Yours is the best because yours looks like you’re dealing with peasants and thinking brilliant thoughts. I always just look like I’ve bitten into a lemon.”
“I’ll vote for you and you should vote for me.”
“That makes us sickening,” Arthur says.
“Eames for Arthur, Arthur for Eames,” says Eames.
So Arthur likes the tweet, and Eames retweets it with #eames4arthur added.
Meanwhile, when Arthur gets back to Twitter proper, there is massive discussion about the fact that Eames and Alec clearly were involved with each other. When did this happen???? #alecandeames and Who has the scoop on this??? Somebody spill!!!! #alecandeames and Eames, I hope Arthur has given you this look a lot for this. Because ALEC? REALLY? That tweet has a photo of Arthur scowling.
Eames, reading over Arthur’s shoulder, remarks, “Yes. Accurate.”
Onscreen Eames says, “You can always tell when Arthur falls in love with something, because his dimples come out. Yusuf, get a close-up of the dimples.”
The camera actually does swoop in closer on Arthur, and his dimples are in evidence, as are his pink ears. “Stop it,” says Arthur onscreen.
“Luckily,” says Eames onscreen, “magnificently, I get to see that look all the time.”
Awwwww. #arthur4eames #eames4arthur and THESE TWO #arthur4eames #eames4arthur, say Twitter. (And Still trying to figure out how Eames slept with Alec #just #what.)
In the end, Ariadne’s woodland glen bedroom wins.
“And that proves that I’m not the biased one,” Arthur says smugly, “you and Alec are, because Ariadne wins in a blind judging.”
“You make a good point there,” muses Eames. “Maybe I’m trying to counter what I think people are going to perceive as your bias, and I don’t even realize I’m doing it.”
Arthur shrugs. “I’m just pleased she won. She had clearly the best room.”
The designer who made the room that was literally a bed loses.
Arthur shuts the television off and turns to Eames and says, “We should think about if we need to issue some kind of statement about your past relationship with Alec.”
“It’s in the past. It’s irrelevant.”
“I don’t really want to live through a bunch of speculation about it, though, so if we could just, like, say that, maybe it would help a little bit with the amount of digging that’s going to happen?” Arthur suggests.
“Fair enough.” Eames’s hand skims up Arthur’s side, and he watches its progress closely, then says slowly, “I’m going to say something to you, and you’re going to think that it’s linked to everything that’s going on with the show, but it’s not. It’s something I’ve been meaning to say for a really long time.”
Arthur regards him in confusion, thinks about statements about past relationships, frets a little bit. “Okay,” he says carefully.
Eames looks up at him. And Eames says, “Marry me.”
Arthur stops breathing.
“Darling.” Eames gives him a wry smile. “You look like I just punched you in the kidney. Try to look a little more enthusiastic about it. Or at least a little less sick.”
“No,” Arthur manages. “I mean, not no. Not—What?” He knows he sounds like an idiot, so he stops talking, hoping Eames will say something instead. Eames usually does talk enough for the both of them.
“I want to marry you,” says Eames patiently.
Arthur keeps staring at him.
Eames leans forward and kisses his shoulder and then settles back into bed as if nothing very remarkable has happened.
“You,” says Arthur, and then has nothing else to say.
“Shh. You need processing time, darling. Don’t say anything else just yet.” Eames gives him a quick, fond kiss and then actually turns the television on.
“No,” Arthur says. “No. Wait.” He turns the television back off. “If this is about what I said—”
“It isn’t really—”
“About what Twitter said—”
“It has absolutely nothing to do with Twitter.”
“About what Alec said—”
“And even less than nothing to do with Alec,” Eames says firmly.
“Would you be saying this to me if all of this hadn’t just happened to us? If we weren’t on ‘Next Big Thing,’ if Alec didn’t freak me out about you not being able to share the spotlight, if Twitter wasn’t telling you to marry me, would you be—”
“This isn’t about Twitter,” Eames says.
“Okay, fine, what about the rest of it?”
Eames pauses. “Well. I’d be lying if I said that it had nothing to do with my realizing how much you worry about our future. I’ve been thinking it forever, darling. I should have asked you long ago. I didn’t—I don’t know why—because—I don’t know, I have no explanation. I should have just asked you. I always meant to. But we were happy and going along and I just didn’t have it in the forefront of my brain.”
“And now it’s there because Alec put it there. Because you think I’m not happy. Because you think I need more.”
“Darling, please don’t make it sound as if I wouldn’t have married you ages ago.”
“If you’d thought of it.”
“If I’d thought you wanted it.”
“I want it,” Arthur says, even though he doesn’t really mean to say it, but he can’t help it. “Of course I want it. I wanted to marry you all along. It’s so stupid, I’ve spent so much time wondering why I feel that way, because I know it wouldn’t really change anything, but, I don’t know, something about the symbolism of it, or something, I don’t know, I really want it.”
“Okay,” Eames says, and puts a soothing hand on the back of Arthur’s neck. “So let’s get married.”
“I don’t want to do it like this,” Arthur says desperately.
“What?”
“I don’t want it to have anything to do with Alec Hart, or this stupid show, or Twitter, or anything that isn’t us. Can you wait? Just a little while? A few more weeks? Until all of this is over and it’s just us again and then ask me again. Can you do that? I don’t want to remember the moment as being this, tonight? Please?” He feels oddly passionate about this and he doesn’t know quite why. He supposes it’s because it’s true that he’s wanted this for so long, dreamed about it, fantasized about it. He’s had an emotionally exhausting week and he doesn’t want to think of the day of his marriage proposal as being linked up with all this nonsense.
Eames smiles at him, a sweet, lovely smile. Eames says, “I can do that, yes.”
“I just want it to be more about us. Just entirely about us,” Arthur says, wanting so badly to be able to explain the jumble in his head and his heart. “You’re wonderful and I love you and I just want it to be—”
“You want it to be an incredibly special moment with champagne and roses,” says Eames. “You would. I can’t believe I just blurted it out at you like this. You’d think I’d just met you and had never had the time to realize how hopelessly romantic you are about these things.”
Arthur knows he’s blushing. The only place to hide is against Eames’s skin, so he does it. “It doesn’t have to be champagne and roses. I’m not trying to be difficult.”
“Shh,” Eames says, and kisses his head. “Stop it. We’ll make it special. Of course we’ll make it special. Of course we will.”
Arthur pushes up so he can see Eames, because this is important. “Are you angry?”
“Not even a little bit,” says Eames.
Arthur studies him and he looks like he’s telling the truth.
“Okay,” Eames says, and leans up so he can kiss Arthur’s temple. “You promised me some hot roleplay about a shepherd, didn’t you?”
And Arthur’s so relieved that Eames doesn’t seem upset, that Eames is willing to just pretend it didn’t happen because of some stupid notion Arthur has of wanting a perfect proposal, that Arthur kisses him hard enough to push him back onto the bed. “Baa,” says Arthur, shifting himself over Eames.
And Eames laughs and kisses him like he loves him more than anything else in the world and wants to keep him forever.
Which Arthur supposes is actually true.