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Arthur watches the back of Eames’ coat as he walks off down Salem Street, battered messenger bag slung over his shoulders, hands shoved in his pockets. Eames reaches Cross Street and ducks out of sight to the right, heading for the T station on the far side of the Greenway.
Arthur looks at the spot where Eames’ shoulder disappeared for a moment, then shakes his head and turns away from the evening foot traffic into the courtyard of the Cobbs’ apartment building.
He kneels to secure the second lock to his bicycle, then picks up his backpack from the pavement and climbs the two flights of stairs to the condo he rents from Dom and Mallorie. They’d kept it when Berkeley stole Dom from MIT because Mal’s family was still in the area, and according to Dom, Mallorie had refused to believe they might stay in California for longer than it took Dom to make his next breakthrough and be hired back East.
Arthur didn’t think Dom wanted to return to Boston, where Mal’s family shadow was long and influential, but he liked them both and loved this apartment so he kept his mouth shut and paid the rent on time and prayed they wouldn’t decide to sell until he could scrape together a down-payment they could afford to take seriously.
When he gets the lock open, Myrtle is waiting on the other side of the door to meet him, twining around his legs and purring resonantly like she hasn’t just spent the last ten hours asleep in her nest of fleece blankets at her preferred end of the sinfully comfortable, overstuffed sofa.
“Yes, I can see you’re weak from hunger,” Arthur tells her, hanging his keys on the hook by the door and reaching into the closet to hang up his windbreaker as he toes off his sneakers. After his first winter in Boston, he still can’t quite believe he’s wearing Converse on the twenty-first of December. He hadn’t even needed a hat and gloves on the walk home, though the warmth of the coffee Eames had bought for him had been welcome while it lasted.
He flicks on the overhead lights and turns right into the kitchen, dropping his backpack on the floor under the island that separates the kitchen from the main living area. He rummages in the cupboard next to the fridge for a tin of catfood and manages to feed Myrtle before he trips over her more than once and she chirrups at him in pleasure as he sets her dish on the floor.
“Don’t eat so fast you’ll make yourself sick,” he hears him say, in echo of his mother, as she hunches over the bowl and begins to inhale her dinner.
He turns on the oven and pulls a freezer dinner out, extracting it from its box and plastic wrapper and folding tinfoil over the top in preparation for sliding it into a fully-heated oven. Then he pours himself a glass of wine from the half-empty bottle on the tiled counter -- Mal had apparently hand-picked every one of the painted tiles that made up the backsplash during their honeymoon in Italy -- and pads down the two shallow steps into the living area. He crosses to one of the two front windows and frowns out into the night, considering the lighted windows of the apartments in the building to his right. Down below, the neighbor with the German shepherd emerges from the side door to take the dog on its evening walk. As Arthur watches, the woman stops to chat with another neighbor, the one with the elderly Pekingese, who’s returning from the same.
“What should do about Eames, cat?” Arthur asks Myrtle, rhetorically.
Myrtle rattles her bowl in answer, busy trying to nose a bit of meat up the side of the dish.
“Yeah, I know,” Arthur sighs. It’s a conversation they’ve had frequently since Myrtle came to live with him back in October. Arthur suspects, since Eames had been the one to drive Arthur and Myrtle home from the MSPCA after Arthur had signed the adoption papers, that Myrtle is faintly surprised that Eames isn’t around all the time, therefore doubling their human capacity to cater to her every whim.
Eames has taken to calling her Auntie Mame. Something, he says, about the way she arranges herself imperiously in her nest of fleece blankets to survey her surroundings. Eames had made Arthur watch the film, several weeks ago, when Arthur had admitted to never having seen it all the way through, but Arthur been exhausted after wrapping a project deadline and fallen asleep with his toes tucked under Eames’ thigh.
He’d woken in the middle of the night with a blanket tucked under his chin, Myrtle kneading his chest, and his phone blinking with a series of texts from Eames.
sweet dreams, darling
we’ll try again some other night
I gave her highness a midnight snack
don’t let her beguile you
unless you wish to be beguiled
don’t worry I’m taking the T home
and then, with a timestamp some forty minutes later,
home safe
because I know you’ll worry otherwise
Arthur takes another sip of Merlot and presses his forehead against the window, looking down at the peacefully distant foot traffic, delivery vans, and occasional car passing on the narrow streets below.
The wine is the end of what Eames had brought the day before, for what had become their regular Sunday movie night with Ariadne and Yusuf. Yusuf and Ariadne, whose bottle they had drunk first, had come to dinner and stayed for Die Hard -- but then left earlier than usual because their flight to Cleveland left at 7:20 from Logan that morning.
And Eames had stayed as Eames often did.
“I’ve got some work to do,” Arthur had said, apologetically, after Yusuf and Ariadne were sent off with Merry Christmases a nd safe travels all around and Eames showed no sign of an imminent departure. “But you’re welcome to stay, if--”
“No worries,” Eames had said, brushing a warm hand across Arthur’s back as he turned back toward the kitchen, “Let me clean up from dinner while you return to saving the world.”
“I’m not --” Arthur began, for form’s sake, because he wasn’t really, not yet. Even if he was hoping, after this software upgrade was complete, that he’d be able to convince Fischer that it was finally time to go on the offense about online harassment. He’s been talking to Katie, Josh and Andrea on the safety team about how the developers could support their work and he thought if they could show Fischer -- who in turn could convince Saito -- that there was money to be made positioning themselves as a leader in combatting Internet-enabled violence, some progress could be made.
And he’s told Eames this, God knows why, in a moment of weakness, because he seems incapable of keeping everything -- except the one most obvious thing -- out of his continual stream-of-consciousness conversations with Eames. So Eames teases him about it: Arthur, working for The Man, for corporate America, for Silicon Valley billionaires, thinking he might be able to pull it off and make the world a bit more … kind. Or safe. Or brilliant.
But beneath all the teasing, Eames also does things like offer to load the dishwasher so Arthur can put out the latest project-related fire, or remind him to eat, or show up at the end of a twelve-hour workday with a fresh cup of coffee to walk Arthur home.
On Sunday night Arthur had just needed to patch the last piece of piece of broken code his team’s pre-launch test of the latest upgrade, scheduled for first thing in the morning. It was embarrassing because the code was simple enough, a patch like Arthur’s been putting together nearly every day since he moved to Boston in January, and he should have been able to tweak it in his sleep … except there was Eames.
Eames, singing obscure English Christmas carols under his breath as he tidied the kitchen.
Eames, explaining his sister’s penchant for Live Free or Die Hard slash -- which Eames apparently had to thank for several excellent pieces of erotica featuring ( oh god Arthur did not need this in his repertoire of fantasies ) Matt Farrell and John McClane -- to an indifferent Myrtle.
Eames, rummaging around in the cupboards for the box of dreadful PG Tips he left at Arthur’s apartment.
Eames, wandering into the living room with his mug and joining Arthur on the couch.
Eames, flipping through the obscene number of television channels until he settled on (of all things) The Snowman with the enthusiasm of a six-year-old.
And, okay, yes , Arthur had deliberately slid his feet into Eames’ lap while Eames was channel surfing on the Cobbs’ ridiculously large flat screen television. Just as an experiment, just to see what Eames would to.
Just to see if this time Arthur could make the presence of Eames in his life make some sort of sense.
It hadn’t worked, that part of the experiment. He was still as baffled as ever about what it was they had between them. But he’s been feeling the warmth of Eames’ hands on the soles of his feet all day, working the tension out of his arches, smoothing up along his calves as far as Arthur’s jeans had let him reach.
Arthur had found himself staring at the same line of code for the entire treacly length of “Walking in the Air,” mesmerized by the press and pull of Eames’ sure hands through the worn wool of his winter socks. He’d wanted to tell Eames he could just pull the socks off, that Arthur wanted Eames gorgeous fucking hands directly on his bare skin. God please just get on with it . But his mouth had felt dry and he had felt sure, in that moment, that acknowledging what Eames was doing in any way would break the spell that was Eames touching him like he had a right.
Arthur had looked up, then, and found Eames’ eyes on him, one hand halfway up Arthur’s calf and the other wrapped firmly around Arthur’s left foot, thumb pressed into the heart center, and felt sure that this would be the night Eames didn’t stop.
He’d opened his mouth, taken a breath to say -- something, anything: stay. yes. please.
But then a complex expression had flickered across Eames’ face, too quickly for Arthur to try and decipher, and Eames had pulled his hand back to squeeze Arthur’s feet, turning back to the movie spooling out in wordless penciled animation on screen.
The moment had passed.
“Was it even a fucking moment?” Arthur asks Myrtle, cleaning her paws toe by toe on top of the kitchen table. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m going crazy.”
After ten months of Eames, he’s no longer sure.
He pulls his phone out of this back pocket and wakes it up, thumbing in the code to unlock the screen. The phone is still open to the screen where Eames’ last text message hangs in a little green bubble: naturally darling.
Arthur hesitates, aware that texting Eames has become something of a compulsion, and then types in Let me know you’ve gotten home . He hits send before he can change his mind. Eames might be a grown man who has lived in this city his whole adult life, but Arthur worries -- particularly when he watches Eames ignore crosswalks and traffic signals, walking out in front of oncoming cars like they’ll naturally stop before him.
The maddening thing is that, so far, they always have. But still, Arthur worries.
Sometimes, when Arthur looks at Eames (when he hopes Eames isn’t watching) all he can think is how terrifying and vulnerable Eames is, and Arthur wants desperately to keep him safe. So he fusses when Eames leaves late at night and makes him promise to let Arthur know when he’s gotten home safe, and Eames teases him about it but always texts him back.
He holds the phone for a moment to see if Eames responds but he doesn’t. He’s probably still on the T, anyway, underground without a signal. And Arthur knows Eames tends to pocket his phone when he’s traveling, preferring to people watch rather than retreat into the relative safety of his device.
Arthur slides his own phone back into his pocket. He rubs at his eyes, dry from staring at his multiple computer screens all day, and glances at his backpack where one of his laptop computers is stowed, waiting for him. He needs to take care of the final details on a presentation his team has to make the next morning at ten. They’re doing a bunch of upgrades just before the end of the year, rolling out a new user interface for 2016, and the user services and public relations teams at each location need the latest details so they can be prepared to handle the inevitable questions, panic, and media.
Instead, Arthur just wants to curl up and sleep. Preferably with Eames.
But Eames isn’t here, tonight, and Arthur has work to do after dinner so he goes into the bathroom, where Mal had insisted on one of those creepy clawfoot bathtubs. She’d found one supported by stylized griffins, tongues curled, tail whipping, wings wrapped around the base of the tub, one claw raised and the other serving as the actual foot of the tub.
Pre-coffee, Arthur often feels the griffins are judging his frail humanity.
He runs water, almost too hot, into the tub and dumps in some of the amber and sandalwood bath salts that Ariadne had given him as an Christmas gift. Myrtle pads in while the tub is filling and curls up on the bathmat next the radiator where she can keep an eye on him and on the bathroom door simultaneously.
When the water is deep enough, Arthur shucks off his clothes and slides with a sigh of gratitude into the tub. He has half an hour while dinner heats up, and perhaps he can soak away some of his Eames-related confusion in the meantime.
If nothing else, he can’t obsessively check for texts from Eames while submerged in a bath.
Arthur reaches down to the floor for his wine glass and takes another sip before sinking down until his chin grazes the surface of the over-scented water. He frowns at his toes, bracketing the faux antiqued brass taps, and lets his mind drift back to Eames. To the expression he had seen on Eames’ face the night before, when Arthur thought Eames was finally -- finally! -- going to make his move. There’s a puzzle in that expression, and perhaps if Arthur can solve it he’ll solve the riddle of Eames’ presence in his life.
Arthur remembers once, during the summer, when he, Eames, and Yusuf had been playing three-man football out on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Yusuf had volunteered as the all-purpose goalie while Eames and Arthur raced to keep the ball away from each other while also sneaking it passed Yusuf into the goal they’d sketched out by a couple of garden stakes.
It had been fast and breathless, Eames playing dirty like Arthur had known he would while Yusuf laughed at them, issuing penalties with abandon that no one paid the slightest attention to, and Arthur reveled in the sweaty, joyous nearness of Eames on the ersatz playing field. As Arthur was working his way toward a third goal Eames’ ankle had caught Arthur’s and down they both went. Which is how they’d ended up tangled in the grass and Eames wrestled Arthur, breathless and laughing, into submission, straddling Arthur’s torso and pinning his wrists to the ground while Arthur half-heartedly tried to escape.
Half-hearted because he still fucking cared about winning that goal but oh my God Eames right there in his space against his skin refusing to let go and leaning over to whisper in Arthur’s ear, “Give it up, darling,” and Arthur wanted more than anything to say yes, whatever you want, yes, what are you waiting for, yes, I’ll give you everything, anything.
He’s going to kiss me , Arthur had thought, wildly. Itself an unoriginal thought, as Arthur had imagined dozens, hundred, thousands of kisses passing between himself and Eames in the scant months of their acquaintance. He’d imagined them so often by the end of June that when the moment was upon him Arthur suddenly felt a vast inner calm, a certainty that it would happen. He’d suddenly felt himself already on the other side of that moment, after the storm had broken, when what if had become we are and the queer game of chicken he and Eames had been playing since midwinter resolved itself into unambiguous certainty.
It had been a June afternoon, the Greenway full of people: couples on blankets, parents with children in bassinets, toddlers shrieking as they splashed through the spray of water in the fountain. It was so very public and Arthur had thought to himself, We’ll just be one more couple , one more of the dozens of couples they’d seen this morning walking hand in hand, sharing a coffee, running after their children. Unremarkable. Self-evident. Eames would lean down to kiss him and Arthur would kiss him back, and the elderly woman sitting on the park bench opposite would think they did this everyday, that this kiss was one of hundreds, thousands, that they had shared or would share over the course of their lives together.
Eames had looked down at Arthur and leaned.
Arthur had flexed his hips up into Eames’ groin, feeling him there, heat-flushed from the exertion of the game, like they both were, and from something else Arthur was all too willing to acknowledge.
Please . He’d thought, then. Please pleasepleasepleaseplease--
Eames had taken a breath through parted lips, inhaling the scent of the new-mowed grass, the wet mud, Arthur’s sweat, pressing down, gently, with his palms against Arthur’s wrists where Arthur was no longer struggling to pull away.
Please , thought Arthur, again, please.
And then that expression had crossed his face and he had exhaled, slowly, sitting back on his heels and letting go of Arthur’s wrists.
A small child, perhaps five or six, the age of Arthur’s niece, had come running up to them, then, with their errant soccer ball in her hands -- Arthur could hear through the ringing in his ears a parent coaching the child from a distance, “Give the man his ball back Rachel, he needs it for his game--” -- and Eames had turned on an entirely different kind of charm, accepting the ball and thanking the girl. Inviting her to play with them, asking to see her footwork. And so they were moving off, into the periphery of Arthur’s vision, while Arthur had lain in the grass staring up into the cloudless blue sky and wondering what the hell had just happened.
Arthur’s thought about that moment many, many times over the intervening months. The scent of Eames’ exertion and unmistakable arousal, the exuberant sound of his laughter, the private whisper of his breath against Arthur’s ear, the way his hips and hands had held Arthur in place, a captive audience to whatever it was going on behind Eames’ eyes.
Sometimes, Arthur woke from distorted dreams, tangled in the sheets, the imprint of Eames’ palms binding at his wrists.
Sometimes, Arthur looked up to see Eames smiling at him and the scent of sweat rolled back over him in a rush of desire.
Sometimes, like tonight, when Eames isn’t here, Arthur allows himself to fantasize about what would have happened in they hadn’t been interrupted. If Eames had let himself want and be wanted. He remembers Eames leaning over him, in the slant of the late afternoon, the way the humid heat of them hung in the air not unlike (and yet entirely unlike) the humidity of the bath.
The heat of the water and the alcohol in the wine is making him sweat, slightly, making everything feel slightly blurred around the edges, allowing him to let go of his fears about getting it right, about scaring Eames away, about not being wanted after all, about getting it wrong, all wrong, about never getting second chances.
The scent of amber climbs around him, like the musk of the soap Eames sometimes uses, and Arthur lets himself imagine Eames’ hands everywhere.
Arthur trails a damp hand down his chest, across his belly, down into the water that rises across his hips. He lets his hand drift, water-weightless, down to rest lightly against his inner thigh. He closes his eyes and thinks about Eames’ hands, strong and sure, on his feet and sliding with hesitant sureness up under Arthur’s jeans to massage the tightness out of his calves. He traces his fingers up to his groin, running the pad of his thumb up along the hardening curve of his dick, tracing the sensitive skin of his balls with his ring and middle fingers. Gently. Slowly. He thinks about Eames’ hands, strong and sure, clamped around the fine bones of his wrist, the solid weight of his knees against Arthur’s heaving ribs. He thinks about how terrifying and wonderful it had felt, that knife-edge of naked desire he remembers from one, maybe two, previous relationships. And not for a long time in the years before Eames.
He wants Eames to hold him down, again. He wants Eames leaning over him, making him feel safe and sure, seen and wanted.
He wants Eames to want him.
As badly, as certainly, as Arthur wants Eames.
Arthur lifts his hips slightly, feeling the water slosh warm across his belly and sluice down over his pelvis and between his thighs. The hot water strips away the fretful to-do lists pressing at the back of his eyeballs, letting him focus on the pull and twist of his hand on the thickening curve of his penis. The water is drying his skin out, making his palm slightly abrasive against the silk-hard softness of his erection, but he doesn’t want to stop and dig out the lube so he fumbles instead for the jar body conditioner on the shelf by the tub. It gives him just enough to work with, and there’s his body working with him now, leaking moisture, a different kind of wet than the cooling water that holds him.
His skin feels hotter than the water and tight, tighter, everything pulling in and narrowing around him, gathering low in his belly like it always does as an orgasm is building. Arthur -- with brief, fervent gratitude for Mal’s expensive taste in bathroom fixtures -- leans back against the deep slant of the tub and pushes up into his own fist, imagining Eames riding his thighs, holding his wrists, nosing in close beneath Arthur’s ear -- that’s it darling, so gorgeous darling, work yourself against me darling -- and in an even more secret, filthier part of Arthur’s soul -- never, darling, I’m never letting you go, I’ve got you here, pinned, mine, always mine, you just try to wriggle away, you won’t get far, I’ve got you, I’ve got you --
And he’s coming, with that embarrassing whine of pleasure, high and tight, his ex-boyfriend Dylan used to tease him about. He’s seizing hard, the orgasm rolling out from his abdomen to the tips of his toes braced against the edge of the tub to the crown of his head, where he feels like someone’s run a light electric charge across his scalp.
He holds himself there, taut, suspended, for a dozen rapid-fire heartbeats, listening to the pound of his pulse in his ears -- onetwothree.four.five.six...seven...eight...oh, Eames, Eames, Eames, Eames.
He listens to the slowing of his own heartbeat and thinks about the haunted longing at the back of Eames’ eyes.
He draws a careful breath and thinks about the hopeful way Eames returns every text, every email, every phone call, every invitation. The way Eames invites himself even when an invitation hasn’t been made.
Arthur is sure he isn’t making up the desire he sees in Eames’ eyes. Now he just needs to figure out a way to make sure Eames understands that Arthur is here saying yes.