My Blue Heaven 1/1
Feb. 15th, 2011 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabi_essentiallyArthur/Eames. Haunted house? Maybe. Sexytimes, anyway. Predictive text shenanigans, mood whiplash, creepy dolls. I clearly read way too much Stephen King and watched way too many horror films as a kid. This fic is a total rip-off of lots of those tropes. But hopefully it's a fun rip-off. :D
Wordcount: 11.5 K
Rating: R to NC17-LITE.
Warnings: Rats, maybe? A little dark?
** ** ** **
"Cool," Arthur says, at the same time that Eames says, "Are you kidding me?"
They look at each other for a moment, eyebrows raised, and then both look back to the house.
It's so typical, Arthur thinks, of every abandoned gothic he's ever seen. He loves the architecture. Loves the high windows, still with the original glass in them. The shingles are faded, warped, paint job after paint job long since worn away. It's blue, though. The color it's meant to be seems to shine out at him. It has arches and angles, round turret rooms on the second floor. He knows that inside there's a spiral staircase. He's seen the blueprints. This is a truly rare find and it's beautiful.
"It's perfect," he says, despite Eames's dubious look. "It's totally off the electricity grid and has been for years. It has a genny and mountain water still runs here. And no one, absolutely no one would ever think to follow us here because it's not supposed to exist. It's the perfect safe house."
Eames shrugs and casually chews on his fingernail. "It just looks dirty. There could be rats. Diseases. Vagrants, have you thought of that? Does your research on possible safe houses ever look into vagrants?"
Arthur rolls his eyes. "It's just for a day, until the job blows over. Get your bags. We're staying, unless you'd rather be followed off the I-95 into some motel, and shot in the head execution style."
Eames levels him with a look of disdain. "You're so morbid."
"Come on, get moving. Rats are better than minions."
Eames mutters something about "depends on whose minions," but gets moving back to the car.
Arthur heads off in the direction of the back of the house, to look for the generator. It's apparently way up on the damn mountain somewhere, according to the blueprint. Makes for a long, uphill walk. And it's really cold out, too. The moon rises above the bare trees, a white grin. Eventually he comes to a shed which must house the genny. It's getting dark and he pulls out his phone to light the inside of the shed. As he does so, it pings with a message.
He frowns at it. Who the hell could be messaging him? To his surprise, it's Eames, who can apparently not wait the few minutes for him to return to tell him something urgent. He reads the text.
Whats taking you, can you not fondle the generator?
Arthur texts back, What? and goes back into the shed. He finds the key, finds the genny. It's an old one, vintage actually, from the 20s. This is unexpected, and frustration hits him. It's not going to fucking work, and they're screwed. He's about to try to start it anyway, when Eames texts him again.
Fucking predictive text I meant find.
Arthur types back, Fondling it currently, leave me in peace.
He goes back to the generator. It takes him a few tries to start it up, during which Eames texts one more time. He ignores him for now, as the genny powers to life. Highly strange. This thing really shouldn't work, it's so damn old. But, gift-horse, mouth, Arthur is just glad that it does. On his way back down to the house, he reads Eames's text.
Haha 'currently', Oh Arthur your puns. Screw you in a minute then.
Arthur smiles and texts, Looking forward to that.
A moment later, Eames returns with, Fuck, I meant see. But that too.
When he gets back to the house, it's almost fully dark, save for the vague, flickering light from the porch light. The power is unsteady; they'll have to use as little of it as they can.
Eames has taken all the bags out of the car and put them on the front porch instead of taking them inside. He stands there, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. One of his tells. He's nervous.
"What are you waiting for?" Arthur asks, picking up his share of the bags and swinging open the front door. The door is heavy, solid oak. The air that gusts out of the house feels like an exhale.
"Wanted to wait," Eames says. "So we could go in together."
"Why would we..." When he turns to give Eames The Look, Eames has got his gun out. Arthur has seen Eames ready to fire, and he's not now. It looks more like some kind of security blanket. "Are you afraid?" he asks. He can feel the grin start to pull up the corners of his mouth and wonders why he's holding it back. If Eames is afraid, then it's not of vagrants or rats. Eames has, on quite a few occasion, shared beds with both vagrants and rats with no fear or complaint.
Eames is afraid of something entirely different, and Arthur bursts out laughing.
"You know," Eames huffs, "just because you use the term 'safe house' doesn't mean... It's not necessarily safe. I think we should take precautions because in this case we have five hundred thousand pounds worth of information that at least three corporations would kill us to have, and corporate dream espionage is not something that... I just think you should realize that as career criminals doing mind-crimes we should at least go into all situations prepared, not blithely running into dark old houses with a lot of corners in them where anyone could be waiting for us."
"Eames," Arthur says again, as he's repeated at least three times during his little defensive hissy fit, "okay, you're right. We should totally check the house out. My bad. Okay? So you take my six and we'll just scope it out. I'm sorry. I didn't give it much thought."
Which is a lie, because Arthur gives everything much thought. Especially post-job safety. But it's not a lie in that he's sorry that Eames thinks he hasn't done his job. Still, he takes out his gun, too, because he's willing to be a good sport. For now, anyway.
"Fine. Thank you, Arthur."
Arthur goes through the motions with him, but really he just looks around this beautiful, historic house. Starting with the great room.
There's an old TV, a wooden table, and a sofa. The sofa is covered with a dusty white sheet. Heavy, midnight blue drapes cover the windows and Arthur is glad to leave them covered, at least for now. The wind outside rattles the old glass.
A square shape looms in the corner, also hidden by a white sheet. Curiosity draws him over to it before anything else.
"Arthur..." Eames begins.
"What? Did rats build a little rat condo, is that what's under there? Or is it our mark, hiding in a box?"
Eames rolls his eyes and gestures with his hand, a flourish of then by all means, be my guest.
Arthur whips the sheet aside, revealing a vintage turntable. This is straight out of the 20s, and beautifully preserved. He has no idea how much something like this is worth. Maybe a couple hundred, or a couple thousand. He can probably make a hundred times more than its worth on one job, but it's just so damn cool, and there are even records under it, and one actually on it.
He turns to Eames. "We should see if it works."
Eames raises an eyebrow. "Darling, please don't touch things."
Arthur relents, sighing.
They move from room to room. Arthur turns on a few lights, and only briefly. He can hear Eames breathing behind him, can feel his heat, like he always can. Eames burns like a furnace, always running hot. Feels hotter now than usual, though.
The kitchen has the original wood stove in it, but it also has an oven from the 80s. The cabinets had been redone sometime in the mid-century. That's disappointing, because although this house is a few hundred years old, Arthur can feel 1927 all throughout.
The staircase is a masterpiece, and remarkably preserved. It looks like at some point someone had made the regrettable decision to put a carpet over them. Fuck you, seventies, Arthur thinks.
Windows line a small anteroom at the top of the stairs before the tremendous hall. Though the floor boards are uneven and creaky, and the doors no longer fit in their bent frames, he can feel the intrinsic beauty of the structure. He can almost see this house in its glory. It must have shone like a beacon at the turn of the century. Mal had taught him to love structures, so that feeling is nothing unusual. But Arthur wants to make love to this house. And that, he must admit, is strange even for him.
He opens the first door, a bedroom. A ridiculously classic bed still dominates the room: Four posts, scrolling dark wood, massive oak headboard. Just a box spring though, no mattress.
"God, Eames," he says, because he can't help it. "This house. It's so fucking awesome. Can you imagine fixing this up? If we got a place like this?"
In the second it takes him to wonder exactly when in his life he'd begun thinking of future plans in the plural, he hears Eames go silent behind him, holding his breath.
"I mean as a safe house," Arthur hastens to add. "A place to flop when we need to hide out."
"Well," Eames says, relenting a little, "It's beautiful. It's just so dirty though, so dusty. Mold would probably kill us off before anything else."
"Before the army of rats?" Arthur teases.
"Rats carry disease, as do roaches and termites."
Arthur turns to him, finally done with the charade. He holsters his gun. "Eames, Really. What." He palms the side of Eames's face, slides his hand to the back of his neck, and gives him a bracing shake. "You're being such a pussy. What's going on?"
Eames stares at him for a second. Then he hits the switch on the wall. It's the old kind, the kind you press. Nothing happens.
Arthur tries the switch, and one bulb in the glass chandelier flickers to life.
Eames holsters his gun, too, and releases the breath he'd been holding. "It's just spooky, all right? And I get intuitions."
Arthur stares, keeping one hand on the back of Eames's neck. "Intuitions."
"Yes. I feel things."
"Feel things. Such as?"
"It's hard to explain."
"Are you talking about ghosts?"
"No," Eames snaps.
But Arthur hears Yes and he smiles. Because this has so much potential for abuse, he can hardly contain himself.
"Good," Arthur says. "For a second there I thought this was gonna be an episode of Scooby Doo or something."
"Of course not," Eames says, offended.
"Excellent. Now we're going to go back downstairs and eat our Chinese takeout. After that I'm going to get the water running in the shower and it's going to be really goddamn cold and you'll have to to warm me back up. Then we're gonna go over the information we got, by the light of that really cool gothic chandelier in the fucking awesome banquet hall, because this house has a goddamn banquet hall." He stops and points to the bed in the center of the room. "Then you're going to fuck me on that ridiculous bed until I'm seeing ghosts. Are we clear?"
And also, I'm going to spend the entire night trying to scare the shit out of you, he does not add.
Eames licks his lips. "That bed doesn't have a mattress."
"I brought an air mattress, asshole." He taps the center of Eames's forehead as if to say Think a little. Then he goes down the hall to look at the other fantastic rooms.
Eames hurries after him.
"Fearless flyer," Arthur mutters, smiling.
** ** ** **
There are many things that Arthur can and will do with many other people, even ones he doesn't trust. Arthur can work with people he doesn't trust; in his job, he has to. He's a criminal who often works with other criminals, and there are times when he's got to have someone's back, fully knowing that in the reverse situation, they'd be just as likely to trip him while he was running from zombies. He's not proud of this fact; it's just what he does. He's point, so making sure every last stupid bastard gets out alive is his job. Even if they harbor plans to shoot him in the head once his usefulness is done – but they never get the chance to do that.
These are things he never has to worry about with Eames, though, because Eames, more thoroughly than anyone, does have his back. He's got that same kind of mentality: look after your squadron. That makes Eames safe. Even when he's skulking around a dark hall with his pajamas in his hands, peering around every corner like Satan's minions are going to jump out and eat his face off.
"The bathroom's not so bad," Arthur says, fresh from an insanely cold shower, shivering even with a blanket wrapped around him. "I wiped the walls down first so it smells like bleach. But it's clean."
"Great," Eames says, and kisses him on the cheek as he passes him in the hall.
Other people are allowed to kiss Arthur, but only after he's given clear signals that it's all right. Eames has been getting the signal for many years now, so that's okay.
Arthur will joke with other people. Most people don't know that about him, but most people only work with him a few times and don't get to know him outside of work. They just see him doing his job, which keeps him pretty rigid and structured. Most of the time (and among thieves,) there's not a lot of room for laughter. But Arthur likes a good joke as much as anyone. In his line of work, laughter is essential. So sure, maybe a lot of his laughter is born of schadenfreude. He doesn't think sitcoms are very witty. Life is funny. Reactions are funny.
There aren't many people that Arthur thinks he can really, truly fuck around with until someone loses an eye. Actually, maybe there is just the one. Which is why it's okay for him to wait until he hears the thin stream of the shower running and then sneak into the bathroom and shut the light.
Eames cries out in a high voice Arthur has never heard before and drops what sounds like a bottle of shampoo. Arthur laughs until he wheezes.
"Fuck you Arthur, just you wait, you twat!" Eames shouts. Then he pulls the curtain aside and throws the bottle at Arthur, and misses. "I'm going to do great acts of violence upon your person, you fucking wanker!"
Arthur laughs until it hurts.
Other people are allowed to hit Arthur, too, depending on the context. He likes to spar at the gym. There are some gyms in different states with some trainers he's gotten to know. He only sees them each maybe once or twice a year. But those men and women are professionals, and they know nothing of him outside of the mat. So those people are allowed to joint-lock him, hit him, bloody him. Just as long as they clap him on the back and smile as he leaves.
Out of context, there's a very small handful of people who are even allowed to touch him without his express written consent, three weeks in advance. And most people who even get a glint in their eye like they're maybe considering raising a hand to him at some point in the near or distant future are either immediately withered with a glance, or punched first. Arthur doesn't take chances.
Eames is allowed to punch him, though. So when Eames is coming down the hall looking like a pissed off wet cat, wrapped in his own blanket, and Arthur jumps out at him from behind the corner, he fully expects to get punched.
Eames yells in surprise again at the same time that his fist connects with Arthur's mouth. Even as Arthur falls flat on his back, dazed, his lip split, he's still finding it really fucking hilarious.
Because somewhere deep inside, Eames knows he can't punch a ghost. He must have known he was really punching Arthur in the face, because he'd pulled the hell out of that one. If he hadn't, Arthur would be looking into dental work tomorrow, or, alternately, he would be in a coma. Eames could easily have cooled him with one shot.
Instead he's just giggling as Eames offers a hand to help him up.
"You're such a shit," Eames gripes. "It's not funny. I could have hurt you."
"But you didn't," Arthur says. He wipes a trickle of blood from his lower lip. It stings. It's going to hurt to drink coffee tomorrow morning. He doesn't mind, though. "And it is funny, because you're literally jumping at shadows like some kind of sap."
"No: I am literally jumping at my twat of a partner who thinks it's a fine idea to come leaping out from behind corners." Eames is shivering in the cold hall, pulling the blanket further around his shoulders and scowling at Arthur.
"Come on downstairs," Arthur says. "We'll get to work, and I promise I'll make it up to you later."
After I fuck with you a little more.
Eames must read his mind, because his scowl deepens. The hallway is really, really cold, but Eames is shivering more than Arthur thinks is strictly necessary. But then, he did just get out of that sadistically cold shower, and Arthur's already had about a half an hour to get over being in hypothermic shock.
"Come on," Arthur urges. "It's warmer downstairs and I'll make you a cup of..."
He stops short, mid-turn, and looks back over Eames's shoulder. His entire body must have tensed, because Eames turns to look over his own shoulder, too. For the moment, Arthur ignores the fact that Eames is being a nancy-pants, because he just had his own first nancy-pants moment. It had only been a second, just one quick little flash of light. Like lightning, but indoors. Not static like a camera flash, but moving across the hall. Like the reflection of light in a swinging mirror. Which, yeah, probably some kind of hanging mirror or something had caught the light. The house is really drafty. Things are probably always moving around here.
"What?" Eames says, his back now to Arthur, as if shielding him from whatever he's seen. "What the fuck?"
"Nothing," Arthur says. "Really. I swear it was nothing. I was just, you know. Fucking with you. Again."
Eames turns back to him, and Arthur just can't manage the cheeky grin in enough time, though he tries.
"You weren't. You saw something."
"Honestly," Arthur scoffs. But he doesn't say, 'No I didn't.' Because he can lie to a few people (even though he doesn't like to, and tries not to,) but he can never lie to Eames.
** ** ** **
If Arthur had caught the heebie-jeebies from Eames upstairs, they're gone now. It was probably just payback for razzing him.
Even so, he's still not done razzing.
While Eames rifles through his suitcase for a pair of heavier socks, Arthur goes to the television just out of curiosity, to see if it still works. Another surprise: It actually does, although it doesn't receive any channels. This whole place is so far off the edge of the map, cable doesn't even care about it. Which strikes him as a little odd, really. Nothing cares about this place. Not even teenagers and vagrants. There's no evidence anywhere of drunken frat parties or legions of stoners using it as a party house. It's dusty, but otherwise pristine.
The television takes about twenty seconds to warm up, the way old ones do. When it finally does, all it shows is static. Arthur smiles at the screen and presses his hand to it.
"Hey, Eames," he says, turning to look over his shoulder. Eames eyes him suspiciously. "Theeey're h-..."
"Shut up, Arthur," Eames snaps.
Arthur laughs and turns back to the TV. The static is too bright for his eyes. It flickers, and he wonders if he stares long enough, will he see the patterns? Television, Einstein's child, this tube of light and shadow. Arthur, like the little kid from Poltergeist, sits there listening to the static noise. He's always liked it. It soothed him as a child. As an adult, he's fascinated by the fact that he's hearing evidence of the Big Bang in any static TV channel. It's like the universe is caressing his hand. The hair on his arm stands up.
He's not sure how long he sits there, staring at it. And then, suddenly, he's not sitting there staring at it. He's standing in the center of the room.
Eames is in the kitchen, unpacking some groceries. Arthur can hear him rustling around in there, taking out cereal boxes and other things that don't go bad without a freezer.
Arthur is supposed to be doing something, but instead he's just standing. The house feels nice around him, welcoming and lovely. God, he could live here. He tilts his head back and looks at the high, wood ceiling. The moulding around the top, sort of art deco. People danced here at some point, maybe. Hid out here. Made love here. Killed here. This can't be this place's first job as a safe house.
"Familiar," he says, to no one. Then, "What was I doing? Am I awake?" He reaches for his totem, kneels down, and rolls it. Three. Again, and again, and again. Definitely awake.
"Arthur. Arthur?"
"Huh?" He turns around to see Eames standing behind him. "What?"
"What are you doing?"
Arthur shrugs. "Just checking."
Eames raises an eyebrow. "Well. Get to work. You're supposed to be cleaning the PASIV."
"Oh. Right."
"Or have you already?"
"No, I..."
They both look at the PASIV, because it's on the ornate table in front of the covered sofa, open. Arthur hadn't opened it. The back of it is facing Eames, but Arthur can see inside. He frowns, looks harder, and takes a few steps toward it.
The glass vials of Somnacin are all shattered in their cases. The compound drips down the inside cover, soaking into chamois cleaning rags underneath them. Something in Arthur's chest constricts.
Eames comes around to the other side and looks into the device. "What the hell is this?"
"What? I didn't. I didn't touch it."
They both kneel in front of the table, frantically wiping down the inner workings of the device, avoiding the broken glass.
"How did this happen?" Eames asks.
Arthur's hands are shaking just a little as he plucks the broken vials out of their holders. He tries to think, forces himself to think, because the PASIV device costs about half of what they had just made in profit for this last job, and there's no way he was careless enough to break all four extra bottles of Somnacin and then forget that he did it.
"The change in temperature," Arthur says. "That's probably what happened. It was really hot in the car. Then we came outside and it's like, ten below. Probably just stressed the glass. Otherwise how could all four of them just shatter like this? Shit. We should test it, make sure everything's all right."
Eames gives him a side-eye as he plucks the biggest shards of broken glass out of the pockets.
"What?" Arthur says. "You can't possibly think I did this." He doesn't hate it when Eames questions him. Everyone should always question everything they find suspicious, and if Arthur's done something wrong, he needs to know. That's how people stay safe. But when he hasn't done anything wrong and Eames doesn't trust his answer – that's different.
Eames looks away. "No, of course you didn't. It's just strange."
And now, Arthur doesn't trust Eames's answers, either. This leaves a bitter feeling in his stomach.
They take the PASIV into the kitchen, where the light is a little brighter. Arthur upends the open device into the black garbage bag that Eames is holding open. Little shards of glass fall from it. It takes a few minutes of compressed air to get the rest of the glass out, because the vials hadn't just cracked, they had shattered into tiny bits.
When they start it up, all the parts still work. It whirs and hums, sending no one to sleep. They are out of Somnacin, though. It's a good thing the job is over. And he doesn't really need it to sleep, the way some dreamers do. Doesn't even really need it to dream anymore, either, thankfully.
Eames doesn't ask why the PASIV was open in the first place. And when they go back into the great room, he also doesn't ask about the imprint of someone's ass and legs on the sheet-covered sofa in front of the table. Arthur's glad for that, because he wouldn't know how to answer.
** ** ** **
Not many people are allowed into Arthur's bed. He doesn't generally discriminate between ladies and men, as long as they are: safe, smart, sharp, intriguing, fascinating, clean and trustworthy. Arthur is very choosy, but he's not uptight. Prudent, but not prudish, is how he likes to look at it. A decent amount of people had measured up, from both ends of the gender spectrum.
He likes having had his fair share.
It occurs to him that he thinks of "having had his fair share," as in, the past tense. Because honestly, in the last few years, he's mostly just waited for Eames when he wants to get laid. No one else has really met his standards in a long time. He probably would have liked Ariadne in his bed at some point, except that she came into his life at the wrong time. It was right around the Fischer job that he started more or less just wanting one person.
He's been sleeping with Eames since around the time they first met, even before they were friends. But now he's in his 30s and Eames is farther along in his 30s and, at least for Arthur, there's pretty much no one else. If it's frightening to think that he might not want anyone else in the foreseeable future, then Arthur is known for nothing if not his bravery.
And because he's a man of exact dates and times, he wonders when, exactly, Eames had vanquished him. There has to have been a moment that it happened. He should be able to pinpoint it.
For all that he's let a relatively normal amount of people into his bed, not that many of them are allowed on top of him. Generally only smaller people, because under normal circumstances, he can be very fidgety about being confined.
Eames outweighs him by a margin, with heavier muscle mass, wide shoulders, ridiculous thighs. If Eames were every truly serious about pinning him, he'd have a decent shot at winning – at least enough so that Arthur would be in for a long, unpleasant struggle. Still, Eames is allowed on top of him, and always has been.
Arthur loves this bed, even though the air mattress takes away from some of the atmosphere. He loves the vaulted ceiling that he can see over Eames's shoulder, loves the broken chandelier, swaying in a draft that he can't feel. He loves the rhythmic thud of the heavy headboard and the four scrolling, carved wood posts.
He loves Eames's hand under the back of his neck, the other on his thigh. The flex and release of Eames's shoulders as he runs his hands over them.
Other people have occasionally been allowed to leave marks on him, in the past. But no one's ever done it as thoroughly as Eames, like he is now, all over his neck, his shoulders, his chest. It makes everything inside of him clench up, burning, every time he does it.
This might be the best night ever. It's relaxed in here, the atmosphere. The PASIV had worked fine, surely the glasses had broken in the cold or during their escape. If Arthur had opened the case and then forgotten that he'd opened it, then whatever. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, even the best of the best.
Arthur's good mood had returned about ten minutes earlier when Eames had shoved him backwards onto the air mattress before realizing that they hadn't put the cap on to keep the air inside. The noise from the hole in the mattress had sounded scatological enough to get Arthur laughing again as it deflated under his weight. Eames had chilled out then, too, chuckling along with him as they re-inflated the goddamn thing and made sure to plug it up.
Then Eames had unwrapped Arthur from his blanket and undressed him slowly – as slowly as he could when it was just pajamas. He took his time with the buttons; Arthur's always liked that.
"Your nose is cold," Eames murmurs, when Arthur presses his face into his neck.
"Ah, sorry," Arthur says, breathless, but smiling.
Yes, they're fine now. Only rarely are they truly not fine, and that's a destructive and non-productive state for both of them, dangerous in their line of work. So they both make the tacit effort to always be "fine" even when they violently disagree.
So it's all right to trail his fingers down Eames's spine and say, "What if a spider fell on your back?" Because he likes what Eames does to him in most scenarios, but sometimes he's in the mood for him when he's got an edge.
Eames reaches back and takes first one of Arthur's wrists from his back, then the other. He presses them together in the same hand.
No one else, not a single other soul on earth, is allowed to pin his hands above his head.
"You're a bastard," Eames says.
Arthur tries to laugh, but he can't even begin to stop the noises that come out of his mouth after that.
He thinks for a second, Fuck the house, fuck the awesome bed, fuck the beautiful structure. Nothing is better than this.
The light flashes again. He sees it over Eames's shoulder and he gasps. Eames takes this as a normal gasp. But despite the body heat, the sweat slicking his entire body, Arthur feels iced to the bones. He starts to shake. Eames misinterprets this, too, kisses him soundly and then draws back to watch his face like he always does.
Arthur tries to forget the fact that there's some reflection, some moving surface somewhere in the room, pinpointing into two bobbing, blue lights on the wall. Sure, probably their phone chargers are reflecting off something.
But they seem to stare directly at him.
** ** ** **
Music wakes him a few hours later. He can't make out what it is, because it's somewhere in the distance, but it sends alarms ringing all over his body. His immediate reaction is his most rational; it's a part of his skill set.
One of us left our phone on. New ringtone. Somewhere downstairs.
Both phones are on the desk beside the bed, glowing softly in their chargers, of course. The same thing had explained the twin lights on the wall – which are gone now. But that doesn't mean that there aren't more phones downstairs. They each carry more than one. Or even Arthur's laptop. Maybe he left that open and on, too, without remembering it. It's possible. And then maybe an ad had popped up on a web page, playing some kind of music. It wouldn't be the first time.
Eames remains asleep beside him. He usually sprawls, but tonight he's curled up on his side, one hand under his cheek. His hair stands up in all directions. Waking him would be unfair. Especially with something potentially spooky, that would have Eames jittery for the rest of the night, and completely fatigued the next morning. They have a lot of driving to do tomorrow.
Or you could stay another day, Arthur thinks. Just to be safe.
He decides to consider it when the sun is up. In the meantime, the muffled music continues to play. Slowly, quietly, Arthur eases himself out of the bed. The air mattress creaks and shifts. Eames cracks his eyes open and says, "What?"
"Nothing, gotta pee," Arthur says. "Go to sleep."
It's kind of amazing that his movement has woken Eames up, but not the music.
Neither of them had fallen asleep naked; it's too cold and not wise. They'd gotten dressed again, so Arthur is still in his pajamas, top and bottom. He grabs the slippers next to the bed and shakes them out, making sure nothing crawled into them, before sliding them on. Takes his gun, and leaves the door open as he goes down the hall, slowly, carefully. He searches for the light-switch and presses it on. The lights lining the ceiling flicker to dim life.
The music floats up from downstairs and Arthur follows it. From here, it sounds less like a ringtone he didn't know either of them had. Less like a pop-up ad on a left-open laptop. It's scratchy, warbly.
It actually sounds like a record.
He moves down the stairs quickly, releasing the safety on the Glock. Because now he's convinced that they've been made. Someone followed them after all. He fucked up, and now he's got to face someone down in his pajamas, in a house that no one's supposed to know about. If the goon lying in wait gets the drop on him, he'll be iced before he can call for backup, and then Eames will be next. It'll be weeks, months before someone locates them via the GPS of his phone.
Arthur reaches the bottom of the stairs and swivels around so he's pressed behind the banister. The music is coming from the turntable. He looks all around the room, taking everything in at once. The blue curtains, the sofa that he can't see behind. The closed front door, the doorway into the kitchen. The many ways someone could ambush him. He's in a cold sweat now, just the same as every time he knows he might be in a jam.
Sure, he's fucked up before, but no one's ever got the jump on him yet. And right now, he's hitting on all eights. So it's not gonna be tonight, either.
"I turn to the right
A little white light
Will lead you to my blue heaven..."
The record on the turntable keeps warbling. He needs to turn it off if he's going to be able to hear anything, so he edges out from behind the banister, keeping his back pressed to the wall. Keeping to the shadows. He can still see all points of potential ambush, and he darts his eyes from one to the next, to the next. Front door. Kitchen door. Sofa. Curtains.
The light from the hall upstairs flickers a few times and then goes out. Arthur's laptop, charging on the table, powers down. It's as if someone cut the genny. It's no surprise that the record is still playing though, since it's not even plugged into the wall. It's probably not a plug-in kind, Arthur thinks, bemused.
A smiling face, a fireplace, a cosy room
A little nest that nestles where roses bloom...
The record keeps singing to him. He's never heard this song before, yet he somehow knows it.
Panting hard, Arthur reaches for the arm of the turntable. He can still see the record player, barely. How can he still see it? The lights are out. It should be pitch dark, but it isn't. The turntable, the white sheet over the sofa, the door to the kitchen – he can see them all, lit by a moving, blueish light.
All of the hair on his body stands up. He's never felt so thoroughly chilled before, so weirdly afraid, so helplessly thrilled.
The twin lights, move towards him – he feels exposed, more than anything. A cold wind envelopes him first, then topples him and flattens him back against the floor.
Something hurts, like icy fingers closing around his entire body. The Glock falls from his fingers and Arthur breathes, just breathes, or tries to.
i missed you, i missed you, i missed you...
The rest is blackness.
** ** ** **
Arthur... Arthur...
Something shaking, something shaking him, hands on his shoulders, *slap*, shaking, shaking...
"Arthur!"
Eames comes into focus above him. When Arthur tries to get up, he slides an arm under his shoulders and helps.
"Someone's in the house," Arthur says. "My gun, where."
"On the floor next to you. Come on. We're leaving."
Panic momentarily overtakes him. "What happened, did they get me? Are you all right?"
He looks around the room, frantic. The lights are on, the room is quiet. He's on the floor of the great room, beneath the turntable.
"I heard you singing," Eames says. "You said you were going for a pee but then I heard you singing, then I heard you fall and I came down." Eames tries to pull him to his feet, but only gets him sitting up.
"I wasn't singing," Arthur says. It comes back to him. "No, that wasn't me. It was the record player, someone turned it on, someone is in the house. I saw it, I heard it. This thing," he points to the turntable, "was playing a record."
Eames stares at him, his eyes wide. He licks his lips like he does when he's really nervous. "Arthur, that thing doesn't work."
"Eames-"
"It doesn't even have an arm to play the record. Look." He succeeds in pulling Arthur up.
Arthur looks into the record player. Eames is right. The record sits on top of the turntable, still covered in layers of dust.
"But..." But I heard the song. I've never heard it before in my life and I heard it tonight. He takes a breath and thinks. "All right. So I probably did hear it some other time. Or I read the lyrics and knew them subconsciously." He turns to Eames and laughs, sounding, even to himself, a little hysterical. "I was walking in my sleep. It's not the first time. It happens to all of us. Okay, so it hasn't happened to me in a few years, but I guess I was due for a sleepwalking episode." He sighs out in relief and rubs his palm against his forehead. God. He had dreamed the whole thing. Which is great, actually, it's really good that he can still dream so vividly after working in his field for so long.
"No, Arthur," Eames says.
"No what?"
"No, it's not just that. Look at yourself."
Arthur looks down. Nothing seems amiss on first glance. Then he sees the blood that sticks his pajama shirt to his side, staining the dark blue into a maroon color.
"What the hell," he says, reaching for the buttons to get the shirt off, to see what kind of harm his somnambulism has caused him. Except he can't find the damn buttons, where the hell are they? This doesn't make sense. He looks down at his pants. Can't find the drawstring either. But he can see the inside seams of all of them. "My clothes are..."
"Inside out, yes," Eames says. "And backwards. Let's have a look at that wound and then, my dear, we are getting the fuck out of here."
Eames leads him into the kitchen, grabbing hold of his first aid kit on the way.
"No." He pulls away from Eames, surprising both of them. "I mean, no, just wait, give me a second. I'm confused. I must have just put my clothes back on while I was asleep and not realized."
Eames urges him to hop onto the sturdy kitchen table. "You never even took your pajamas off, so there's no way you could have, you know, mysteriously put them back on the wrong way."
"I did it in my sleep."
"It was about sixty seconds since you left the bed until I got downstairs and found you on the floor. There's no way."
"Then it makes perfect sense. Of course it was a dream, a real one, not a PASIV one. It felt like a few minutes to me. A few seconds to you."
Eames just pulls up a chair and looks up at him, stern. Then he tugs the sleeves of the pajama top down his arm, and off.
Arthur moves his arm out of the way and peers down to where Eames is cleaning blood off the side of his stomach, his hip. When Eames breathes out, it's shaky, like his hands.
"Fuck, Arthur, something bit you."
And sure enough, there are two puncture marks, about a hands- width apart, marking the back of his side. Like something with a long, wide mouth had sunk its top teeth into him. It doesn't hurt, doesn't even feel like anything. There are bruises, too. The shape of five fingers, splayed wide, mark his hip where Eames tugs the top of the pajama bottoms down. Four on the back of his hip, one in the front.
"Maybe you did that?" Arthur asks. His voice sounds too soft.
Eames spreads his hand as wide as it can go and tries to match his fingers to the prints on him. He doesn't even come close.
"Hold still," Eames says. He takes a needle out of his kit, swabs Arthur's bare arm and jabs it in.
"You think it's rat bites?" Arthur asks. It makes sense, sounds rational.
"Don't know," Eames says. "Best to be cautious." He grabs the back of Arthur's neck and presses their foreheads together. "Get everything packed. At once."
At this point, Arthur can't argue.
But when Eames goes to the great room and starts to gather all their things, Arthur takes a second to part the heavy curtains and look outside. Under the flickering porch light, the entire front steps are covered in ice.
"Fuck me," Arthur says. "No way. Eames." He turns back to where Eames is shoving Arthur's laptop back into its case. "We can't."
"Can and will."
"No, really. Come here."
Eames looks actually angry as he crosses the room and looks out the window. Arthur stands back and lets him, feeling very weird, some uncomfortable emotion that he can't name.
When Eames turns around to glare at him, it hits him: Guilt.
"What?" Arthur says. "You're... you think that I somehow... Eames, that's ridiculous."
"I didn't say anything. Start packing."
"Do me a favor. Just think about this. With black ice like this we'll never make it down the mountain in the dark."
"Arthur, we can't stay here."
"I know. I agree." He puts his hand on Eames's arm, placating. Not arguing. "But I'm trying to be logical about this. It's too dark. There aren't any street lights coming up this way and we're on an ice covered mountain. If we wait until the dawn, we can at least see the roads."
Eames looks out the window again, clearly still angry. Then he looks back to Arthur.
"I'm sorry," Arthur says. God, how he hates, more than anything, not having done his job, and failing his team. He actually hates it worse than having walking nightmares and waking up with rat bites. "I didn't listen to the weather reports and I really didn't think it through. I should have. I've lived up north, I know how had roads get, but this time it just didn't occur to me. I missed a detail. It was important and I just didn't consider it as a factor. So this one's on me, but next time, I'll make sure."
Eames takes his hand to stop him from gesturing and rubs his thumb into Arthur's open palm. "We weren't getting radio stations this far out anyway. You couldn't have known it would ice over."
"We still have cell phone reception. If we get into a real jam, we can call for help. Okay, but I really think we're all right. We've seen worse shit. We've got this; it's all silk."
Eames is giving him that strange look, the one like he sometimes doesn't know who he is. Arthur's never quite cared for that look and he doesn't care for it now.
"Let's see if we can catch a few more winks before sunup," he tells Eames. "We'll grab our stuff from the upstairs bedroom, pull the mattress down here and wait it out. A few more hours. Okay?"
"Yes," Eames says. His eyes are troubled, unhappy. He presses Arthur's palm to the side of his face. "I suppose we don't have much of a choice."
Arthur smiles, wanting to see Eames smile too. "Can I still scare the shit out of you?"
"You are," Eames says.
This doesn't make Arthur feel any better at all.
** ** ** **
Eames eventually nods off. Arthur's glad he's getting a few more Zs. The poor guy needs them.
Arthur, though, is wide awake. His side tingles where the damn rats hat taken chunks out of him. But it's not pain, really, just a strange, pulling sort of feeling. Antsy, like. As if he forgot something. There's a hint of danger there, tugging at his consciousness. He still doesn't feel like they're alone in the house. He knows by now that Eames thinks it's ghosts or something. Eames can be such a bunny sometimes, Christ.
He never did check the attic. That was probably pretty stupid. He hates failing at his job. Letting Eames down before, the thing with the ice, that really rankles. He's supposed to be best, supposed to have everything covered. Arthur, as field commander on this one, as point, should have checked the attic and he hadn't. That's just bad, bad business.
This time, he doesn't make a sound as he gets up off the sofa. He leaves Eames there to get some sleep. That's because Eames calls him his "oppo." Arthur's American but he knows what that means; it means your opposite number, your best friend in battle, the guy who looks after you, the guy you look after on the field. He's not going to fail again.
He takes the Glock and climbs back up those glorious stairs, so beautifully structured. When he gets to the top and leans over the railing, everything looks kind of muddy and slow. Eames is lying on the sofa, looking surreal. Unutterably beautiful, with his sleep-parted lips and ridiculous eyelashes, but more than anything, just quietly, totally surreal.
Nightshades falling, lovers calling
What makes the world go round...
He thinks of the lyrics, maybe hums them, too.
It gives him the heebie-jeebies, staring at Eames like that, all unknowing. So he turns away and walks the length of the upstairs hall, to the last door. He knows where it is, because he's looked at the blueprint.
The house's last owners had put in a fancy attic ladder in one of the closets. Arthur pulls it down. A puff of dust falls and he ducks his head and covers his eyes until it settles. Then he climbs up.
There's a hanging light-chain at the top of the stairs, and he pulls it. A bare, swinging bulb illuminates the musty attic. Spiders and mice scatter in different directions.
In the corner, front-lit, stands a man in a suit and hat. The man lunges at him, making not a sound.
Arthur starts back so badly that he has to catch himself on the stairs to not break his neck. He grips the Glock and peers back up, already aiming. It's the second time tonight that he's almost pissed himself in surprise, and now he's angry.
But no one's there.
What is there, however, is a hat stand with an old coat hanging from it, and a hat perched on top. The shadows made by the swinging light stretch and arch, then fall back.
"Fuck," Arthur breathes. He laughs a little as he hauls himself the rest of the way up the stairs and into the attic.
Typical attic, and no one here. He had panicked for nothing. But it's still always better to be on the safe side, anyway.
There's a ton of stuff up here, like a treasure hunt for the traveling roadshow crowd, if one was into that kind of thing. Could even be something of real value. A wardrobe stands against one wall There's a chest, a violin case, a bunch of old blankets wrapped up in bags. Toys, a tricycle, a rocking horse, plush animals, dolls. Plastic dolls with the paint chipped off their faces, and porcelain dolls with glass eyes that stare at him.
He stares back at one of them, a blonde one with its silk hair cut pageboy style. She's got one eye open and one shut. It looks like she's winking at him.
Arthur shudders and turns away. Dolls are inherently fucking creepy. They also cannot hurt you.
Aside from that, it's kind of neat up here, but that's to be expected. The whole house is kind of neat. When he thinks about it, their rush to leave is quite silly. Eames is acting like a ninny, really. It's just a house. A really cool house with lots of vintage stuff in it that appeals to Arthur's taste.
Like that hat in the corner, on the stand. Damned if that isn't just exactly like the fedora he used to have, but had given away. He'd meant to get himself a new one, because that hat had been real good luck.
He walks over to it, on creaking floorboards. Or maybe it's the rats squeaking from corners, or both. He takes the fedora off the stand, brushes it down. It's a little dusty, but in good condition. It really does look almost exactly like the one he'd given away. He taps the dust out of it, slaps it against the wall, and brushes it off again.
"Nice," he says, setting it on top of his head.
It's not like he's stealing. And even if he was, stealing is sort of what he does with his life anyway. And he steals dreams, which are far more important than hats.
The coat ends up being a lady's coat, and is a little worse for wear, moth-eaten and torn. He runs his hand down the arm.
Someone sighs, and Arthur spins around, gun drawn.
No one's there. Obviously, it was just another draft in an old house. Must be hard to get used to, he thinks. The draft had sounded sort of happy, though. Feminine, actually.
Arthur shakes his head and tucks the gun back into the waistband of his pants. You're being ridiculous, he tells himself. But he doesn't touch the coat again.
He goes to the really old wardrobe and pries the door open. There's no Narnia in here, just a bunch of clothes on hangers, in plastic bags. Suits, jackets, dresses, and other things that he can buy for himself if he wants them.
But Arthur's need for clothes is a pragmatic one: he dresses for whatever his jobs require. This stuff is really cool, but it's not necessary.
There's a pack of cigarettes on the shelf. That's actually really weird, because most everything in this house is old, but these are pretty new. The strangest thing is that they're his brand.
Or, his old brand, now that he thinks about it. He hasn't lit up in about three years. He'd quit the day he couldn't finish his morning run, and had never gone back.
But there's a gold lighter next to the pack. He picks it up, turns it over in his hand. Scrolling letters are etched into the front of it, and A, an ampersand, and an N. He doesn't know what the "N" stands for.
"Well," he murmurs aloud to himself, "you don't know what the A stands for either, really."
He hasn't even realized that he's tapping a cigarette out of the box until it's already between his lips. The taste of it surprises him. The flick of the lighter does, too. Especially since, why does this lighter even work? Jesus. It must be ancient.
He inhales sharply and shoves the pack, and the lighter, into the pocket of his pajamas. He takes another look around the attic, at all these lost treasures. Smoke blurs his vision as he exhales.
"Well," he says, plucking the cigarette from his lips and tipping the ashes, "that was fun."
He goes back to the stairs and turns around to descend, grabbing the hanging light-chain on his way. Before he pulls it and kills the light, he catches sight of the blond, bob-haired doll. Both of her blue, glass eyes are open now.
** ** ** **
Arthur is sitting on an old, carved wooden chair, cleaning his gun and smoking, when Eames wakes up with a cough. He looks rumpled and still tired.
This is a tough business they're in, after all.
"Wish you'd get more sleep," Arthur tells him. "It's only dawn yet. We got some time."
Eames is giving him a funny look. He sits up on the sofa and asks, "When did you start smoking again?"
Arthur sighs. Nag nag nag. But he doesn't answer, 'cause if he thinks too hard about it, he's gonna get a headache. A headache is the last thing he needs. "Got a whole deck in my pocket. Want one?"
"No. Thank you." Eames is still giving him a side-eye like there's something funny.
"What?" Arthur says. "See anything green?"
"Where did you get the hat?" Eames asks.
"Quit being such a bunny." Hat this, smoking that, it never ends with the third degree around here.
Eames gets up off the sofa and walks over to him. Arthur pulls the gasper out from between his teeth and rolls his eyes, because, oh, here it comes now, some kind of lecture. Damned if they haven't been down this road before. He can't remember when, though.
"Fine," he says, and looks around for his ashtray to stub the ember out. Shit. There's an ashtray around here somewhere, there has to be.
Eames takes the cigarette from him and crushes it out on the floor.
"Hey, asshole," Arthur says, rising from the chair to meet him, "what the fuck was that? These are hardwood floors, you know how much work that is? Jesus."
"Arthur," Eames says. His voice is soft. "Look. I know there's a part of your past where you go when you've got something on your mind. I understand. It took me a few years, but I get it. All right? But this feels a bit different to the Arthur that I know."
"Shush, okay?" Arthur says. Eames is worried and Arthur wants to let him know that he's got this, this is just eggs in the coffee. He puts his hand to the back or Eames's head and draws him in. Kisses his temple, firm and lingering. Then chucks him under the chin with his knuckles.
"That was," Eames says, "well, quite proprietary of you, Arthur. I'm just going to go put our bags into the car. All right? By the time we get to the winding roads, we'll be able to see them. We're on the eastern side. We'll be fine. But we should hurry. Stay here, will you?"
"Sure," Arthur says. "Anything you say. You might wanna pin your diapers on before you go outside. Looks pretty cold."
"Pin my... Oh. Yes, you too, Arthur. Get dressed."
He has to laugh. Eames can be so goofy sometimes, but he's crazy over him, just dizzy about him.
Eames gets dressed in a hurry and then starts taking all their bags outside. Arthur is in no such hurry. He tucks his gat into the back of his pajama bottoms again and parts the curtains to look outside. Eames isn't just packing their stuff into old getaway bucket sitting outside. He's also talking on the phone to someone.
He turns back to the house for a glance, and Arthur ducks behind the curtains quickly.
What the hell? Who is Eames talking to out there? Is he trying to get someone else to come here, or something? To come into their home? Their safe place? Doesn't he know how dangerous it is to let anyone else know about this house?
"God, what are you thinking?" Arthur whispers. He parts the curtains again. Eames is shoving things into the car, haphazard and careless, yammering on the phone like it's something important. His free hand is flailing around like he's trying to make some kind of goddamn point.
Arthur doesn't like any of this.
He's still not dressed when Eames comes back in. Just pajamas, slippers, his hat, deck of cigs and lighter in his pocket, and gat in his waistband. Just where the hell does Eames think they're going?
"Who were you talking to?" Arthur asks. He keeps his voice nice and even, because Eames has been acting just a little crazy here and he doesn't want to upset him.
"To Yusuf. I've got some answers." Eames hurries into the kitchen to get the bag of groceries they'd left there the night before. "Come on, let's get out of here."
Anger burns up inside him, sudden and furious. Why hadn't they unpacked their groceries? It was like they had intended to go running out of here the whole time. "Why do you want to leave?" he asks as Eames comes back from the kitchen. "Why do you hate our house?"
Eames stops short. His eyes are wide, frightened, a little. Arthur is honestly sorry he shouted, but Eames can be such a wet blanket sometimes.
"Arthur." Eames approaches slowly, like Arthur's the one losing his marbles here. "Yusuf says a bad batch of Somnacin has been going around. Highly unstable. Combusts easily in high altitudes, any of this ringing a bell?"
"Right, the broken bottles. See? No big deal. I told you. We're fine here."
"It's also causing side effects in high altitudes as well, where there's less oxygen. Paranoia, tremors, fever. That's exactly how I feel. Mild delusions, hallucinations, somnambulism. That's you, Arthur."
"That's ridiculous."
Eames drops the groceries on the floor and rushes over to him. Arthur doesn't have time to react – not that he'd know how to react anyway. Eames cups his face in his palms, then slides his hands around to the back of his neck, grips him hard.
"I need you, Arthur. You're my point; I can't do this alone. Please don't fail me."
Fail. The word is like a bucket of ice down his chest. He grabs onto Eames's wrists, like he's anchoring himself there. "I won't fail you. I won't. What do you need? Anything. You know that's why I'm here."
"I need you to help me get out of here. To get back down the mountain."
"Fine. Yes, of course I can do that. I'll go cut the genny..."
"Fuck the electricity. It's crazy that it worked in the first place, it won't even last."
"Something will short out," Arthur insists. "The house could burn." And, christ, that hurts. It tears something up inside of him. This beautiful home, the blue painted shingles, the immaculate winding stairs. But Eames is holding him in place with his eyes, his almost deadly focus.
Arthur is very open to taking suggestions and is nowhere near as stubborn as his reputation implies; going with the flow is actually his thing. He's adaptive. However, no one else has the ability to hold him in a place or move him from one quite the way Eames does.
Arthur swallows hard; his throat feels tight. "Let's go."
He doesn't even get dressed. Just throws his overcoat on, steps into his shoes, and they're both out the door. A blast of cold, dry air hits him and he coughs. Jesus, why had he picked up that stupid pack of cigarettes? He ditches them, along with the lighter, on the porch as they leave.
"Lose the hat," Eames says. "It's not yours."
He takes it off, reluctant, strangely aching for something he can't name. When he puts the hat down, inside the door, he does so gently.
Eames closes the door behind them. The porch light flickers out. Arthur hears the entire house power down, everything shutting off as if they generator had been cut suddenly. It sounds like a sigh. The lights go dark, probably for the last time.
** ** ** **
Arthur wakes up alone in the car. Twilight now, the fading colors of the sky visible through the fog on the windshield. He can hardly believe he slept through the turn-off from the highway and Eames parking them here – wherever "here" is. He opens the door and steps out. It's freezing, but the air does feel fuller, heavier. His own head feels clear now. Bad reaction to Somnacin, he remembers. Not the first time, for any of them.
They're parked outside a shitty strip mall and Arthur is, in fact, still in pajamas. Eames is nowhere in sight. Arthur pulls out his phone and dials him.
Eames picks up on the third ring and says, "What? You all right?"
Arthur whispers, "Do you like scary movies?"
"Fucker," Eames answers, and ends the call.
Arthur redials.
"What, I'm busy," Eames huffs at him.
"The call is coming from inside your pants."
"I'm not answering again," Eames says, and hangs up.
Arthur chuckles at that and then texts him: Where are you and what are you dong?
Eames texts, What am I dong indeed.
"Shit," Arthur mutters, and types, DOING.
He waits for about five minutes with no answer. Finally his phone pings. Eames's message reads, Buying you things. And getting erections to the closest hotel. Before Arthur can answer, Eames texts again, Fuck, directions. But erections too.
Arthur texts back, OK. I'll drive from here on and you can give me erections.
Eames texts, Sounds dangerous.
A few minutes later, Arthur looks out the window and spies him coming from one of the many doors. He considers getting out of the car, hiding behind it, and leaping out when Eames goes to look for him. That would be priceless.
Then he sees that Eames is carrying a cardboard pizza box, and one of Arthur's canvas bags in his other hand. Instead, he gets out of the car to help him.
"I've got it," Eames says when Arthur takes the pizza off his hands. "Get back in the car, you'll freeze."
Arthur gets behind the wheel this time, and Eames gives him directions, and not erections. They eat on the way. Eames falls asleep right after his second slice of pizza, and Arthur relies on his scribbled notes to find the hotel.
It's dark by the time they get there. Eames wakes, stretching, and tries to smooth his hair down. They get their bags out of the car and head up to their room.
It's a nice enough room, as hotels generally are. Clean, quiet, inoffensive.
Boring, Arthur thinks.
He's designed countless dream hotels and walked their halls for more of his life than he cares to remember, awake and asleep. He knows their structure in real life, knows their mazes and tricks in the dream world. Their teams always work with hotels a lot. Unless one had been extraordinary in some way, or spectacularly beautiful, Arthur is mostly just used to them. They don't affect him in any particular way.
But tonight, in this flat, muted, square room with its earth tones and non-style, he feels inexplicably melancholy.
Eames goes into the shower. He invites Arthur, and Arthur considers the offer. But in the end, he'd rather be alone, and he doesn't exactly know why.
When he hears the water running, he parts the brown curtains, lifts the white blinds, and stares out the window to a parking lot. Some buildings loom across the way, blocking the sky. Square, modern ones in beige and glass.
Tonight, perhaps, in a dream, he'll build his own house and walk its halls. Make up a fantastic staircase that winds into a figure eight. He'll create something beautiful and revel in the details. He's been in the business for so long; it seems like an age since he's dreamed something up just for art's sake.
Maybe that's what it is. Maybe I'm in a dry spell.
It's not, though, and he knows it. His fingers drift to his side, where two puncture marks are already starting to scab over, and five, wide-spread bruises color his hip.
Rat bites. Probably fell onto or walked into... five different things.
The bad batch of Somnacin, the altitude, these explain everything. Nothing is really left to pointless and morbid imaginings.
The sound of a sigh as the genny had cut off and the house powered down, though... It still leaves him feeling sad.
Eames comes out of the shower and tells him, "All yours."
"Thanks." Arthur continues staring out the window.
Eames is quiet for a moment or two; Arthur can feel his eyes on his back. He hears him sit down on the bed and knows that A Talk is coming. He's just not sure what it's going to be about. Probably about why he's sulking over nothing, staring out of windows. But surely he's entitled to a little battle fatigue once in a while.
"So," Eames says. "You said something to me yesterday and I've been giving it some thought."
Arthur nods. He'd said a lot of things, most of them teasing, until the effects of the bad compound had started to rattle them both.
"You said that it might not be a bad idea to, you know, actually get a place. An actual safe house where we could go at any time, off the grid. We could go separately or together depending on the job, but ideally, no one else would know about it. Just us. Well. That's not a bad idea, really."
Arthur smiles out the window. Something kind of aches, a little different from the sighing "goodbye" of leaving the house.
"It could be, you know," Eames says, stammering a little, "it could be a lovely place, the same style of the one we just left. We could look for something similar. With less treacherous roads. Which is not to say that you chose a bad place, I don't mean it like that at all."
"It was a bad decision," Arthur says. "I really should have thought of the roads. If we'd had to really speed away down there, we might not have made it."
"Well. So not on a mountain, then. We could research. Find the right place. Get a generator so we won't be on any grids. No address. It wouldn't be easy. I mean, I know this last house was a rare find. But it's possible and if we could find something like it, then we could go halves with it."
"That's a good idea," Arthur says. "Actually it's a great idea. I'm glad you thought of it."
"You thought of it," Eames reminds him.
They both fall silent, while Arthur considers how he feels. He can't tell if he's lost something or gained something.
"I got you something," Eames says. The bag on the bed rustles around as he digs around in it. "It's not exactly the same, but. It was the only one I could find."
Arthur turns, smiling now, and joins him on the bed, crossing one leg under him. Eames sets the fedora on top of his head and adjusts it so the brim is low.
"Thanks," Arthur says.
"It suits you. When you were a kid, when I first saw you like this, I wondered what the hell you were on about with the hats and briefcases and suits. But no one pulls it off quite like you do. Perhaps this one isn't as lucky as your original one, but it looks nice."
"Luck is created, not inherent," Arthur says. "I don't have anything for you, though."
"Don't you?" Eames asks, grinning, and pulls him onto the bed, running his finger along the buttons of his top.
Arthur, like anyone, gets into these rare, sullen moods occasionally. Sometimes his childhood comes blazing back into him, all violence and loss. Sometimes it's over Mal, or it's a weird reaction to any aspect of the job, or because life forces him to leave things behind. Sometimes it's just because—and this one is hard for him to admit—he's human. When he gets into them, his one rule is that he likes to be left alone until he works it out.
Eames is the only one allowed to break that rule.
** ** ** **
My Blue Heaven
Creepy little song, eh? Rumored to be not about a couple and their child, but rather a threesome arrangement.
Wordcount: 11.5 K
Rating: R to NC17-LITE.
Warnings: Rats, maybe? A little dark?
** ** ** **
"Cool," Arthur says, at the same time that Eames says, "Are you kidding me?"
They look at each other for a moment, eyebrows raised, and then both look back to the house.
It's so typical, Arthur thinks, of every abandoned gothic he's ever seen. He loves the architecture. Loves the high windows, still with the original glass in them. The shingles are faded, warped, paint job after paint job long since worn away. It's blue, though. The color it's meant to be seems to shine out at him. It has arches and angles, round turret rooms on the second floor. He knows that inside there's a spiral staircase. He's seen the blueprints. This is a truly rare find and it's beautiful.
"It's perfect," he says, despite Eames's dubious look. "It's totally off the electricity grid and has been for years. It has a genny and mountain water still runs here. And no one, absolutely no one would ever think to follow us here because it's not supposed to exist. It's the perfect safe house."
Eames shrugs and casually chews on his fingernail. "It just looks dirty. There could be rats. Diseases. Vagrants, have you thought of that? Does your research on possible safe houses ever look into vagrants?"
Arthur rolls his eyes. "It's just for a day, until the job blows over. Get your bags. We're staying, unless you'd rather be followed off the I-95 into some motel, and shot in the head execution style."
Eames levels him with a look of disdain. "You're so morbid."
"Come on, get moving. Rats are better than minions."
Eames mutters something about "depends on whose minions," but gets moving back to the car.
Arthur heads off in the direction of the back of the house, to look for the generator. It's apparently way up on the damn mountain somewhere, according to the blueprint. Makes for a long, uphill walk. And it's really cold out, too. The moon rises above the bare trees, a white grin. Eventually he comes to a shed which must house the genny. It's getting dark and he pulls out his phone to light the inside of the shed. As he does so, it pings with a message.
He frowns at it. Who the hell could be messaging him? To his surprise, it's Eames, who can apparently not wait the few minutes for him to return to tell him something urgent. He reads the text.
Whats taking you, can you not fondle the generator?
Arthur texts back, What? and goes back into the shed. He finds the key, finds the genny. It's an old one, vintage actually, from the 20s. This is unexpected, and frustration hits him. It's not going to fucking work, and they're screwed. He's about to try to start it anyway, when Eames texts him again.
Fucking predictive text I meant find.
Arthur types back, Fondling it currently, leave me in peace.
He goes back to the generator. It takes him a few tries to start it up, during which Eames texts one more time. He ignores him for now, as the genny powers to life. Highly strange. This thing really shouldn't work, it's so damn old. But, gift-horse, mouth, Arthur is just glad that it does. On his way back down to the house, he reads Eames's text.
Haha 'currently', Oh Arthur your puns. Screw you in a minute then.
Arthur smiles and texts, Looking forward to that.
A moment later, Eames returns with, Fuck, I meant see. But that too.
When he gets back to the house, it's almost fully dark, save for the vague, flickering light from the porch light. The power is unsteady; they'll have to use as little of it as they can.
Eames has taken all the bags out of the car and put them on the front porch instead of taking them inside. He stands there, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. One of his tells. He's nervous.
"What are you waiting for?" Arthur asks, picking up his share of the bags and swinging open the front door. The door is heavy, solid oak. The air that gusts out of the house feels like an exhale.
"Wanted to wait," Eames says. "So we could go in together."
"Why would we..." When he turns to give Eames The Look, Eames has got his gun out. Arthur has seen Eames ready to fire, and he's not now. It looks more like some kind of security blanket. "Are you afraid?" he asks. He can feel the grin start to pull up the corners of his mouth and wonders why he's holding it back. If Eames is afraid, then it's not of vagrants or rats. Eames has, on quite a few occasion, shared beds with both vagrants and rats with no fear or complaint.
Eames is afraid of something entirely different, and Arthur bursts out laughing.
"You know," Eames huffs, "just because you use the term 'safe house' doesn't mean... It's not necessarily safe. I think we should take precautions because in this case we have five hundred thousand pounds worth of information that at least three corporations would kill us to have, and corporate dream espionage is not something that... I just think you should realize that as career criminals doing mind-crimes we should at least go into all situations prepared, not blithely running into dark old houses with a lot of corners in them where anyone could be waiting for us."
"Eames," Arthur says again, as he's repeated at least three times during his little defensive hissy fit, "okay, you're right. We should totally check the house out. My bad. Okay? So you take my six and we'll just scope it out. I'm sorry. I didn't give it much thought."
Which is a lie, because Arthur gives everything much thought. Especially post-job safety. But it's not a lie in that he's sorry that Eames thinks he hasn't done his job. Still, he takes out his gun, too, because he's willing to be a good sport. For now, anyway.
"Fine. Thank you, Arthur."
Arthur goes through the motions with him, but really he just looks around this beautiful, historic house. Starting with the great room.
There's an old TV, a wooden table, and a sofa. The sofa is covered with a dusty white sheet. Heavy, midnight blue drapes cover the windows and Arthur is glad to leave them covered, at least for now. The wind outside rattles the old glass.
A square shape looms in the corner, also hidden by a white sheet. Curiosity draws him over to it before anything else.
"Arthur..." Eames begins.
"What? Did rats build a little rat condo, is that what's under there? Or is it our mark, hiding in a box?"
Eames rolls his eyes and gestures with his hand, a flourish of then by all means, be my guest.
Arthur whips the sheet aside, revealing a vintage turntable. This is straight out of the 20s, and beautifully preserved. He has no idea how much something like this is worth. Maybe a couple hundred, or a couple thousand. He can probably make a hundred times more than its worth on one job, but it's just so damn cool, and there are even records under it, and one actually on it.
He turns to Eames. "We should see if it works."
Eames raises an eyebrow. "Darling, please don't touch things."
Arthur relents, sighing.
They move from room to room. Arthur turns on a few lights, and only briefly. He can hear Eames breathing behind him, can feel his heat, like he always can. Eames burns like a furnace, always running hot. Feels hotter now than usual, though.
The kitchen has the original wood stove in it, but it also has an oven from the 80s. The cabinets had been redone sometime in the mid-century. That's disappointing, because although this house is a few hundred years old, Arthur can feel 1927 all throughout.
The staircase is a masterpiece, and remarkably preserved. It looks like at some point someone had made the regrettable decision to put a carpet over them. Fuck you, seventies, Arthur thinks.
Windows line a small anteroom at the top of the stairs before the tremendous hall. Though the floor boards are uneven and creaky, and the doors no longer fit in their bent frames, he can feel the intrinsic beauty of the structure. He can almost see this house in its glory. It must have shone like a beacon at the turn of the century. Mal had taught him to love structures, so that feeling is nothing unusual. But Arthur wants to make love to this house. And that, he must admit, is strange even for him.
He opens the first door, a bedroom. A ridiculously classic bed still dominates the room: Four posts, scrolling dark wood, massive oak headboard. Just a box spring though, no mattress.
"God, Eames," he says, because he can't help it. "This house. It's so fucking awesome. Can you imagine fixing this up? If we got a place like this?"
In the second it takes him to wonder exactly when in his life he'd begun thinking of future plans in the plural, he hears Eames go silent behind him, holding his breath.
"I mean as a safe house," Arthur hastens to add. "A place to flop when we need to hide out."
"Well," Eames says, relenting a little, "It's beautiful. It's just so dirty though, so dusty. Mold would probably kill us off before anything else."
"Before the army of rats?" Arthur teases.
"Rats carry disease, as do roaches and termites."
Arthur turns to him, finally done with the charade. He holsters his gun. "Eames, Really. What." He palms the side of Eames's face, slides his hand to the back of his neck, and gives him a bracing shake. "You're being such a pussy. What's going on?"
Eames stares at him for a second. Then he hits the switch on the wall. It's the old kind, the kind you press. Nothing happens.
Arthur tries the switch, and one bulb in the glass chandelier flickers to life.
Eames holsters his gun, too, and releases the breath he'd been holding. "It's just spooky, all right? And I get intuitions."
Arthur stares, keeping one hand on the back of Eames's neck. "Intuitions."
"Yes. I feel things."
"Feel things. Such as?"
"It's hard to explain."
"Are you talking about ghosts?"
"No," Eames snaps.
But Arthur hears Yes and he smiles. Because this has so much potential for abuse, he can hardly contain himself.
"Good," Arthur says. "For a second there I thought this was gonna be an episode of Scooby Doo or something."
"Of course not," Eames says, offended.
"Excellent. Now we're going to go back downstairs and eat our Chinese takeout. After that I'm going to get the water running in the shower and it's going to be really goddamn cold and you'll have to to warm me back up. Then we're gonna go over the information we got, by the light of that really cool gothic chandelier in the fucking awesome banquet hall, because this house has a goddamn banquet hall." He stops and points to the bed in the center of the room. "Then you're going to fuck me on that ridiculous bed until I'm seeing ghosts. Are we clear?"
And also, I'm going to spend the entire night trying to scare the shit out of you, he does not add.
Eames licks his lips. "That bed doesn't have a mattress."
"I brought an air mattress, asshole." He taps the center of Eames's forehead as if to say Think a little. Then he goes down the hall to look at the other fantastic rooms.
Eames hurries after him.
"Fearless flyer," Arthur mutters, smiling.
** ** ** **
There are many things that Arthur can and will do with many other people, even ones he doesn't trust. Arthur can work with people he doesn't trust; in his job, he has to. He's a criminal who often works with other criminals, and there are times when he's got to have someone's back, fully knowing that in the reverse situation, they'd be just as likely to trip him while he was running from zombies. He's not proud of this fact; it's just what he does. He's point, so making sure every last stupid bastard gets out alive is his job. Even if they harbor plans to shoot him in the head once his usefulness is done – but they never get the chance to do that.
These are things he never has to worry about with Eames, though, because Eames, more thoroughly than anyone, does have his back. He's got that same kind of mentality: look after your squadron. That makes Eames safe. Even when he's skulking around a dark hall with his pajamas in his hands, peering around every corner like Satan's minions are going to jump out and eat his face off.
"The bathroom's not so bad," Arthur says, fresh from an insanely cold shower, shivering even with a blanket wrapped around him. "I wiped the walls down first so it smells like bleach. But it's clean."
"Great," Eames says, and kisses him on the cheek as he passes him in the hall.
Other people are allowed to kiss Arthur, but only after he's given clear signals that it's all right. Eames has been getting the signal for many years now, so that's okay.
Arthur will joke with other people. Most people don't know that about him, but most people only work with him a few times and don't get to know him outside of work. They just see him doing his job, which keeps him pretty rigid and structured. Most of the time (and among thieves,) there's not a lot of room for laughter. But Arthur likes a good joke as much as anyone. In his line of work, laughter is essential. So sure, maybe a lot of his laughter is born of schadenfreude. He doesn't think sitcoms are very witty. Life is funny. Reactions are funny.
There aren't many people that Arthur thinks he can really, truly fuck around with until someone loses an eye. Actually, maybe there is just the one. Which is why it's okay for him to wait until he hears the thin stream of the shower running and then sneak into the bathroom and shut the light.
Eames cries out in a high voice Arthur has never heard before and drops what sounds like a bottle of shampoo. Arthur laughs until he wheezes.
"Fuck you Arthur, just you wait, you twat!" Eames shouts. Then he pulls the curtain aside and throws the bottle at Arthur, and misses. "I'm going to do great acts of violence upon your person, you fucking wanker!"
Arthur laughs until it hurts.
Other people are allowed to hit Arthur, too, depending on the context. He likes to spar at the gym. There are some gyms in different states with some trainers he's gotten to know. He only sees them each maybe once or twice a year. But those men and women are professionals, and they know nothing of him outside of the mat. So those people are allowed to joint-lock him, hit him, bloody him. Just as long as they clap him on the back and smile as he leaves.
Out of context, there's a very small handful of people who are even allowed to touch him without his express written consent, three weeks in advance. And most people who even get a glint in their eye like they're maybe considering raising a hand to him at some point in the near or distant future are either immediately withered with a glance, or punched first. Arthur doesn't take chances.
Eames is allowed to punch him, though. So when Eames is coming down the hall looking like a pissed off wet cat, wrapped in his own blanket, and Arthur jumps out at him from behind the corner, he fully expects to get punched.
Eames yells in surprise again at the same time that his fist connects with Arthur's mouth. Even as Arthur falls flat on his back, dazed, his lip split, he's still finding it really fucking hilarious.
Because somewhere deep inside, Eames knows he can't punch a ghost. He must have known he was really punching Arthur in the face, because he'd pulled the hell out of that one. If he hadn't, Arthur would be looking into dental work tomorrow, or, alternately, he would be in a coma. Eames could easily have cooled him with one shot.
Instead he's just giggling as Eames offers a hand to help him up.
"You're such a shit," Eames gripes. "It's not funny. I could have hurt you."
"But you didn't," Arthur says. He wipes a trickle of blood from his lower lip. It stings. It's going to hurt to drink coffee tomorrow morning. He doesn't mind, though. "And it is funny, because you're literally jumping at shadows like some kind of sap."
"No: I am literally jumping at my twat of a partner who thinks it's a fine idea to come leaping out from behind corners." Eames is shivering in the cold hall, pulling the blanket further around his shoulders and scowling at Arthur.
"Come on downstairs," Arthur says. "We'll get to work, and I promise I'll make it up to you later."
After I fuck with you a little more.
Eames must read his mind, because his scowl deepens. The hallway is really, really cold, but Eames is shivering more than Arthur thinks is strictly necessary. But then, he did just get out of that sadistically cold shower, and Arthur's already had about a half an hour to get over being in hypothermic shock.
"Come on," Arthur urges. "It's warmer downstairs and I'll make you a cup of..."
He stops short, mid-turn, and looks back over Eames's shoulder. His entire body must have tensed, because Eames turns to look over his own shoulder, too. For the moment, Arthur ignores the fact that Eames is being a nancy-pants, because he just had his own first nancy-pants moment. It had only been a second, just one quick little flash of light. Like lightning, but indoors. Not static like a camera flash, but moving across the hall. Like the reflection of light in a swinging mirror. Which, yeah, probably some kind of hanging mirror or something had caught the light. The house is really drafty. Things are probably always moving around here.
"What?" Eames says, his back now to Arthur, as if shielding him from whatever he's seen. "What the fuck?"
"Nothing," Arthur says. "Really. I swear it was nothing. I was just, you know. Fucking with you. Again."
Eames turns back to him, and Arthur just can't manage the cheeky grin in enough time, though he tries.
"You weren't. You saw something."
"Honestly," Arthur scoffs. But he doesn't say, 'No I didn't.' Because he can lie to a few people (even though he doesn't like to, and tries not to,) but he can never lie to Eames.
** ** ** **
If Arthur had caught the heebie-jeebies from Eames upstairs, they're gone now. It was probably just payback for razzing him.
Even so, he's still not done razzing.
While Eames rifles through his suitcase for a pair of heavier socks, Arthur goes to the television just out of curiosity, to see if it still works. Another surprise: It actually does, although it doesn't receive any channels. This whole place is so far off the edge of the map, cable doesn't even care about it. Which strikes him as a little odd, really. Nothing cares about this place. Not even teenagers and vagrants. There's no evidence anywhere of drunken frat parties or legions of stoners using it as a party house. It's dusty, but otherwise pristine.
The television takes about twenty seconds to warm up, the way old ones do. When it finally does, all it shows is static. Arthur smiles at the screen and presses his hand to it.
"Hey, Eames," he says, turning to look over his shoulder. Eames eyes him suspiciously. "Theeey're h-..."
"Shut up, Arthur," Eames snaps.
Arthur laughs and turns back to the TV. The static is too bright for his eyes. It flickers, and he wonders if he stares long enough, will he see the patterns? Television, Einstein's child, this tube of light and shadow. Arthur, like the little kid from Poltergeist, sits there listening to the static noise. He's always liked it. It soothed him as a child. As an adult, he's fascinated by the fact that he's hearing evidence of the Big Bang in any static TV channel. It's like the universe is caressing his hand. The hair on his arm stands up.
He's not sure how long he sits there, staring at it. And then, suddenly, he's not sitting there staring at it. He's standing in the center of the room.
Eames is in the kitchen, unpacking some groceries. Arthur can hear him rustling around in there, taking out cereal boxes and other things that don't go bad without a freezer.
Arthur is supposed to be doing something, but instead he's just standing. The house feels nice around him, welcoming and lovely. God, he could live here. He tilts his head back and looks at the high, wood ceiling. The moulding around the top, sort of art deco. People danced here at some point, maybe. Hid out here. Made love here. Killed here. This can't be this place's first job as a safe house.
"Familiar," he says, to no one. Then, "What was I doing? Am I awake?" He reaches for his totem, kneels down, and rolls it. Three. Again, and again, and again. Definitely awake.
"Arthur. Arthur?"
"Huh?" He turns around to see Eames standing behind him. "What?"
"What are you doing?"
Arthur shrugs. "Just checking."
Eames raises an eyebrow. "Well. Get to work. You're supposed to be cleaning the PASIV."
"Oh. Right."
"Or have you already?"
"No, I..."
They both look at the PASIV, because it's on the ornate table in front of the covered sofa, open. Arthur hadn't opened it. The back of it is facing Eames, but Arthur can see inside. He frowns, looks harder, and takes a few steps toward it.
The glass vials of Somnacin are all shattered in their cases. The compound drips down the inside cover, soaking into chamois cleaning rags underneath them. Something in Arthur's chest constricts.
Eames comes around to the other side and looks into the device. "What the hell is this?"
"What? I didn't. I didn't touch it."
They both kneel in front of the table, frantically wiping down the inner workings of the device, avoiding the broken glass.
"How did this happen?" Eames asks.
Arthur's hands are shaking just a little as he plucks the broken vials out of their holders. He tries to think, forces himself to think, because the PASIV device costs about half of what they had just made in profit for this last job, and there's no way he was careless enough to break all four extra bottles of Somnacin and then forget that he did it.
"The change in temperature," Arthur says. "That's probably what happened. It was really hot in the car. Then we came outside and it's like, ten below. Probably just stressed the glass. Otherwise how could all four of them just shatter like this? Shit. We should test it, make sure everything's all right."
Eames gives him a side-eye as he plucks the biggest shards of broken glass out of the pockets.
"What?" Arthur says. "You can't possibly think I did this." He doesn't hate it when Eames questions him. Everyone should always question everything they find suspicious, and if Arthur's done something wrong, he needs to know. That's how people stay safe. But when he hasn't done anything wrong and Eames doesn't trust his answer – that's different.
Eames looks away. "No, of course you didn't. It's just strange."
And now, Arthur doesn't trust Eames's answers, either. This leaves a bitter feeling in his stomach.
They take the PASIV into the kitchen, where the light is a little brighter. Arthur upends the open device into the black garbage bag that Eames is holding open. Little shards of glass fall from it. It takes a few minutes of compressed air to get the rest of the glass out, because the vials hadn't just cracked, they had shattered into tiny bits.
When they start it up, all the parts still work. It whirs and hums, sending no one to sleep. They are out of Somnacin, though. It's a good thing the job is over. And he doesn't really need it to sleep, the way some dreamers do. Doesn't even really need it to dream anymore, either, thankfully.
Eames doesn't ask why the PASIV was open in the first place. And when they go back into the great room, he also doesn't ask about the imprint of someone's ass and legs on the sheet-covered sofa in front of the table. Arthur's glad for that, because he wouldn't know how to answer.
** ** ** **
Not many people are allowed into Arthur's bed. He doesn't generally discriminate between ladies and men, as long as they are: safe, smart, sharp, intriguing, fascinating, clean and trustworthy. Arthur is very choosy, but he's not uptight. Prudent, but not prudish, is how he likes to look at it. A decent amount of people had measured up, from both ends of the gender spectrum.
He likes having had his fair share.
It occurs to him that he thinks of "having had his fair share," as in, the past tense. Because honestly, in the last few years, he's mostly just waited for Eames when he wants to get laid. No one else has really met his standards in a long time. He probably would have liked Ariadne in his bed at some point, except that she came into his life at the wrong time. It was right around the Fischer job that he started more or less just wanting one person.
He's been sleeping with Eames since around the time they first met, even before they were friends. But now he's in his 30s and Eames is farther along in his 30s and, at least for Arthur, there's pretty much no one else. If it's frightening to think that he might not want anyone else in the foreseeable future, then Arthur is known for nothing if not his bravery.
And because he's a man of exact dates and times, he wonders when, exactly, Eames had vanquished him. There has to have been a moment that it happened. He should be able to pinpoint it.
For all that he's let a relatively normal amount of people into his bed, not that many of them are allowed on top of him. Generally only smaller people, because under normal circumstances, he can be very fidgety about being confined.
Eames outweighs him by a margin, with heavier muscle mass, wide shoulders, ridiculous thighs. If Eames were every truly serious about pinning him, he'd have a decent shot at winning – at least enough so that Arthur would be in for a long, unpleasant struggle. Still, Eames is allowed on top of him, and always has been.
Arthur loves this bed, even though the air mattress takes away from some of the atmosphere. He loves the vaulted ceiling that he can see over Eames's shoulder, loves the broken chandelier, swaying in a draft that he can't feel. He loves the rhythmic thud of the heavy headboard and the four scrolling, carved wood posts.
He loves Eames's hand under the back of his neck, the other on his thigh. The flex and release of Eames's shoulders as he runs his hands over them.
Other people have occasionally been allowed to leave marks on him, in the past. But no one's ever done it as thoroughly as Eames, like he is now, all over his neck, his shoulders, his chest. It makes everything inside of him clench up, burning, every time he does it.
This might be the best night ever. It's relaxed in here, the atmosphere. The PASIV had worked fine, surely the glasses had broken in the cold or during their escape. If Arthur had opened the case and then forgotten that he'd opened it, then whatever. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, even the best of the best.
Arthur's good mood had returned about ten minutes earlier when Eames had shoved him backwards onto the air mattress before realizing that they hadn't put the cap on to keep the air inside. The noise from the hole in the mattress had sounded scatological enough to get Arthur laughing again as it deflated under his weight. Eames had chilled out then, too, chuckling along with him as they re-inflated the goddamn thing and made sure to plug it up.
Then Eames had unwrapped Arthur from his blanket and undressed him slowly – as slowly as he could when it was just pajamas. He took his time with the buttons; Arthur's always liked that.
"Your nose is cold," Eames murmurs, when Arthur presses his face into his neck.
"Ah, sorry," Arthur says, breathless, but smiling.
Yes, they're fine now. Only rarely are they truly not fine, and that's a destructive and non-productive state for both of them, dangerous in their line of work. So they both make the tacit effort to always be "fine" even when they violently disagree.
So it's all right to trail his fingers down Eames's spine and say, "What if a spider fell on your back?" Because he likes what Eames does to him in most scenarios, but sometimes he's in the mood for him when he's got an edge.
Eames reaches back and takes first one of Arthur's wrists from his back, then the other. He presses them together in the same hand.
No one else, not a single other soul on earth, is allowed to pin his hands above his head.
"You're a bastard," Eames says.
Arthur tries to laugh, but he can't even begin to stop the noises that come out of his mouth after that.
He thinks for a second, Fuck the house, fuck the awesome bed, fuck the beautiful structure. Nothing is better than this.
The light flashes again. He sees it over Eames's shoulder and he gasps. Eames takes this as a normal gasp. But despite the body heat, the sweat slicking his entire body, Arthur feels iced to the bones. He starts to shake. Eames misinterprets this, too, kisses him soundly and then draws back to watch his face like he always does.
Arthur tries to forget the fact that there's some reflection, some moving surface somewhere in the room, pinpointing into two bobbing, blue lights on the wall. Sure, probably their phone chargers are reflecting off something.
But they seem to stare directly at him.
** ** ** **
Music wakes him a few hours later. He can't make out what it is, because it's somewhere in the distance, but it sends alarms ringing all over his body. His immediate reaction is his most rational; it's a part of his skill set.
One of us left our phone on. New ringtone. Somewhere downstairs.
Both phones are on the desk beside the bed, glowing softly in their chargers, of course. The same thing had explained the twin lights on the wall – which are gone now. But that doesn't mean that there aren't more phones downstairs. They each carry more than one. Or even Arthur's laptop. Maybe he left that open and on, too, without remembering it. It's possible. And then maybe an ad had popped up on a web page, playing some kind of music. It wouldn't be the first time.
Eames remains asleep beside him. He usually sprawls, but tonight he's curled up on his side, one hand under his cheek. His hair stands up in all directions. Waking him would be unfair. Especially with something potentially spooky, that would have Eames jittery for the rest of the night, and completely fatigued the next morning. They have a lot of driving to do tomorrow.
Or you could stay another day, Arthur thinks. Just to be safe.
He decides to consider it when the sun is up. In the meantime, the muffled music continues to play. Slowly, quietly, Arthur eases himself out of the bed. The air mattress creaks and shifts. Eames cracks his eyes open and says, "What?"
"Nothing, gotta pee," Arthur says. "Go to sleep."
It's kind of amazing that his movement has woken Eames up, but not the music.
Neither of them had fallen asleep naked; it's too cold and not wise. They'd gotten dressed again, so Arthur is still in his pajamas, top and bottom. He grabs the slippers next to the bed and shakes them out, making sure nothing crawled into them, before sliding them on. Takes his gun, and leaves the door open as he goes down the hall, slowly, carefully. He searches for the light-switch and presses it on. The lights lining the ceiling flicker to dim life.
The music floats up from downstairs and Arthur follows it. From here, it sounds less like a ringtone he didn't know either of them had. Less like a pop-up ad on a left-open laptop. It's scratchy, warbly.
It actually sounds like a record.
He moves down the stairs quickly, releasing the safety on the Glock. Because now he's convinced that they've been made. Someone followed them after all. He fucked up, and now he's got to face someone down in his pajamas, in a house that no one's supposed to know about. If the goon lying in wait gets the drop on him, he'll be iced before he can call for backup, and then Eames will be next. It'll be weeks, months before someone locates them via the GPS of his phone.
Arthur reaches the bottom of the stairs and swivels around so he's pressed behind the banister. The music is coming from the turntable. He looks all around the room, taking everything in at once. The blue curtains, the sofa that he can't see behind. The closed front door, the doorway into the kitchen. The many ways someone could ambush him. He's in a cold sweat now, just the same as every time he knows he might be in a jam.
Sure, he's fucked up before, but no one's ever got the jump on him yet. And right now, he's hitting on all eights. So it's not gonna be tonight, either.
"I turn to the right
A little white light
Will lead you to my blue heaven..."
The record on the turntable keeps warbling. He needs to turn it off if he's going to be able to hear anything, so he edges out from behind the banister, keeping his back pressed to the wall. Keeping to the shadows. He can still see all points of potential ambush, and he darts his eyes from one to the next, to the next. Front door. Kitchen door. Sofa. Curtains.
The light from the hall upstairs flickers a few times and then goes out. Arthur's laptop, charging on the table, powers down. It's as if someone cut the genny. It's no surprise that the record is still playing though, since it's not even plugged into the wall. It's probably not a plug-in kind, Arthur thinks, bemused.
A smiling face, a fireplace, a cosy room
A little nest that nestles where roses bloom...
The record keeps singing to him. He's never heard this song before, yet he somehow knows it.
Panting hard, Arthur reaches for the arm of the turntable. He can still see the record player, barely. How can he still see it? The lights are out. It should be pitch dark, but it isn't. The turntable, the white sheet over the sofa, the door to the kitchen – he can see them all, lit by a moving, blueish light.
All of the hair on his body stands up. He's never felt so thoroughly chilled before, so weirdly afraid, so helplessly thrilled.
The twin lights, move towards him – he feels exposed, more than anything. A cold wind envelopes him first, then topples him and flattens him back against the floor.
Something hurts, like icy fingers closing around his entire body. The Glock falls from his fingers and Arthur breathes, just breathes, or tries to.
i missed you, i missed you, i missed you...
The rest is blackness.
** ** ** **
Arthur... Arthur...
Something shaking, something shaking him, hands on his shoulders, *slap*, shaking, shaking...
"Arthur!"
Eames comes into focus above him. When Arthur tries to get up, he slides an arm under his shoulders and helps.
"Someone's in the house," Arthur says. "My gun, where."
"On the floor next to you. Come on. We're leaving."
Panic momentarily overtakes him. "What happened, did they get me? Are you all right?"
He looks around the room, frantic. The lights are on, the room is quiet. He's on the floor of the great room, beneath the turntable.
"I heard you singing," Eames says. "You said you were going for a pee but then I heard you singing, then I heard you fall and I came down." Eames tries to pull him to his feet, but only gets him sitting up.
"I wasn't singing," Arthur says. It comes back to him. "No, that wasn't me. It was the record player, someone turned it on, someone is in the house. I saw it, I heard it. This thing," he points to the turntable, "was playing a record."
Eames stares at him, his eyes wide. He licks his lips like he does when he's really nervous. "Arthur, that thing doesn't work."
"Eames-"
"It doesn't even have an arm to play the record. Look." He succeeds in pulling Arthur up.
Arthur looks into the record player. Eames is right. The record sits on top of the turntable, still covered in layers of dust.
"But..." But I heard the song. I've never heard it before in my life and I heard it tonight. He takes a breath and thinks. "All right. So I probably did hear it some other time. Or I read the lyrics and knew them subconsciously." He turns to Eames and laughs, sounding, even to himself, a little hysterical. "I was walking in my sleep. It's not the first time. It happens to all of us. Okay, so it hasn't happened to me in a few years, but I guess I was due for a sleepwalking episode." He sighs out in relief and rubs his palm against his forehead. God. He had dreamed the whole thing. Which is great, actually, it's really good that he can still dream so vividly after working in his field for so long.
"No, Arthur," Eames says.
"No what?"
"No, it's not just that. Look at yourself."
Arthur looks down. Nothing seems amiss on first glance. Then he sees the blood that sticks his pajama shirt to his side, staining the dark blue into a maroon color.
"What the hell," he says, reaching for the buttons to get the shirt off, to see what kind of harm his somnambulism has caused him. Except he can't find the damn buttons, where the hell are they? This doesn't make sense. He looks down at his pants. Can't find the drawstring either. But he can see the inside seams of all of them. "My clothes are..."
"Inside out, yes," Eames says. "And backwards. Let's have a look at that wound and then, my dear, we are getting the fuck out of here."
Eames leads him into the kitchen, grabbing hold of his first aid kit on the way.
"No." He pulls away from Eames, surprising both of them. "I mean, no, just wait, give me a second. I'm confused. I must have just put my clothes back on while I was asleep and not realized."
Eames urges him to hop onto the sturdy kitchen table. "You never even took your pajamas off, so there's no way you could have, you know, mysteriously put them back on the wrong way."
"I did it in my sleep."
"It was about sixty seconds since you left the bed until I got downstairs and found you on the floor. There's no way."
"Then it makes perfect sense. Of course it was a dream, a real one, not a PASIV one. It felt like a few minutes to me. A few seconds to you."
Eames just pulls up a chair and looks up at him, stern. Then he tugs the sleeves of the pajama top down his arm, and off.
Arthur moves his arm out of the way and peers down to where Eames is cleaning blood off the side of his stomach, his hip. When Eames breathes out, it's shaky, like his hands.
"Fuck, Arthur, something bit you."
And sure enough, there are two puncture marks, about a hands- width apart, marking the back of his side. Like something with a long, wide mouth had sunk its top teeth into him. It doesn't hurt, doesn't even feel like anything. There are bruises, too. The shape of five fingers, splayed wide, mark his hip where Eames tugs the top of the pajama bottoms down. Four on the back of his hip, one in the front.
"Maybe you did that?" Arthur asks. His voice sounds too soft.
Eames spreads his hand as wide as it can go and tries to match his fingers to the prints on him. He doesn't even come close.
"Hold still," Eames says. He takes a needle out of his kit, swabs Arthur's bare arm and jabs it in.
"You think it's rat bites?" Arthur asks. It makes sense, sounds rational.
"Don't know," Eames says. "Best to be cautious." He grabs the back of Arthur's neck and presses their foreheads together. "Get everything packed. At once."
At this point, Arthur can't argue.
But when Eames goes to the great room and starts to gather all their things, Arthur takes a second to part the heavy curtains and look outside. Under the flickering porch light, the entire front steps are covered in ice.
"Fuck me," Arthur says. "No way. Eames." He turns back to where Eames is shoving Arthur's laptop back into its case. "We can't."
"Can and will."
"No, really. Come here."
Eames looks actually angry as he crosses the room and looks out the window. Arthur stands back and lets him, feeling very weird, some uncomfortable emotion that he can't name.
When Eames turns around to glare at him, it hits him: Guilt.
"What?" Arthur says. "You're... you think that I somehow... Eames, that's ridiculous."
"I didn't say anything. Start packing."
"Do me a favor. Just think about this. With black ice like this we'll never make it down the mountain in the dark."
"Arthur, we can't stay here."
"I know. I agree." He puts his hand on Eames's arm, placating. Not arguing. "But I'm trying to be logical about this. It's too dark. There aren't any street lights coming up this way and we're on an ice covered mountain. If we wait until the dawn, we can at least see the roads."
Eames looks out the window again, clearly still angry. Then he looks back to Arthur.
"I'm sorry," Arthur says. God, how he hates, more than anything, not having done his job, and failing his team. He actually hates it worse than having walking nightmares and waking up with rat bites. "I didn't listen to the weather reports and I really didn't think it through. I should have. I've lived up north, I know how had roads get, but this time it just didn't occur to me. I missed a detail. It was important and I just didn't consider it as a factor. So this one's on me, but next time, I'll make sure."
Eames takes his hand to stop him from gesturing and rubs his thumb into Arthur's open palm. "We weren't getting radio stations this far out anyway. You couldn't have known it would ice over."
"We still have cell phone reception. If we get into a real jam, we can call for help. Okay, but I really think we're all right. We've seen worse shit. We've got this; it's all silk."
Eames is giving him that strange look, the one like he sometimes doesn't know who he is. Arthur's never quite cared for that look and he doesn't care for it now.
"Let's see if we can catch a few more winks before sunup," he tells Eames. "We'll grab our stuff from the upstairs bedroom, pull the mattress down here and wait it out. A few more hours. Okay?"
"Yes," Eames says. His eyes are troubled, unhappy. He presses Arthur's palm to the side of his face. "I suppose we don't have much of a choice."
Arthur smiles, wanting to see Eames smile too. "Can I still scare the shit out of you?"
"You are," Eames says.
This doesn't make Arthur feel any better at all.
** ** ** **
Eames eventually nods off. Arthur's glad he's getting a few more Zs. The poor guy needs them.
Arthur, though, is wide awake. His side tingles where the damn rats hat taken chunks out of him. But it's not pain, really, just a strange, pulling sort of feeling. Antsy, like. As if he forgot something. There's a hint of danger there, tugging at his consciousness. He still doesn't feel like they're alone in the house. He knows by now that Eames thinks it's ghosts or something. Eames can be such a bunny sometimes, Christ.
He never did check the attic. That was probably pretty stupid. He hates failing at his job. Letting Eames down before, the thing with the ice, that really rankles. He's supposed to be best, supposed to have everything covered. Arthur, as field commander on this one, as point, should have checked the attic and he hadn't. That's just bad, bad business.
This time, he doesn't make a sound as he gets up off the sofa. He leaves Eames there to get some sleep. That's because Eames calls him his "oppo." Arthur's American but he knows what that means; it means your opposite number, your best friend in battle, the guy who looks after you, the guy you look after on the field. He's not going to fail again.
He takes the Glock and climbs back up those glorious stairs, so beautifully structured. When he gets to the top and leans over the railing, everything looks kind of muddy and slow. Eames is lying on the sofa, looking surreal. Unutterably beautiful, with his sleep-parted lips and ridiculous eyelashes, but more than anything, just quietly, totally surreal.
Nightshades falling, lovers calling
What makes the world go round...
He thinks of the lyrics, maybe hums them, too.
It gives him the heebie-jeebies, staring at Eames like that, all unknowing. So he turns away and walks the length of the upstairs hall, to the last door. He knows where it is, because he's looked at the blueprint.
The house's last owners had put in a fancy attic ladder in one of the closets. Arthur pulls it down. A puff of dust falls and he ducks his head and covers his eyes until it settles. Then he climbs up.
There's a hanging light-chain at the top of the stairs, and he pulls it. A bare, swinging bulb illuminates the musty attic. Spiders and mice scatter in different directions.
In the corner, front-lit, stands a man in a suit and hat. The man lunges at him, making not a sound.
Arthur starts back so badly that he has to catch himself on the stairs to not break his neck. He grips the Glock and peers back up, already aiming. It's the second time tonight that he's almost pissed himself in surprise, and now he's angry.
But no one's there.
What is there, however, is a hat stand with an old coat hanging from it, and a hat perched on top. The shadows made by the swinging light stretch and arch, then fall back.
"Fuck," Arthur breathes. He laughs a little as he hauls himself the rest of the way up the stairs and into the attic.
Typical attic, and no one here. He had panicked for nothing. But it's still always better to be on the safe side, anyway.
There's a ton of stuff up here, like a treasure hunt for the traveling roadshow crowd, if one was into that kind of thing. Could even be something of real value. A wardrobe stands against one wall There's a chest, a violin case, a bunch of old blankets wrapped up in bags. Toys, a tricycle, a rocking horse, plush animals, dolls. Plastic dolls with the paint chipped off their faces, and porcelain dolls with glass eyes that stare at him.
He stares back at one of them, a blonde one with its silk hair cut pageboy style. She's got one eye open and one shut. It looks like she's winking at him.
Arthur shudders and turns away. Dolls are inherently fucking creepy. They also cannot hurt you.
Aside from that, it's kind of neat up here, but that's to be expected. The whole house is kind of neat. When he thinks about it, their rush to leave is quite silly. Eames is acting like a ninny, really. It's just a house. A really cool house with lots of vintage stuff in it that appeals to Arthur's taste.
Like that hat in the corner, on the stand. Damned if that isn't just exactly like the fedora he used to have, but had given away. He'd meant to get himself a new one, because that hat had been real good luck.
He walks over to it, on creaking floorboards. Or maybe it's the rats squeaking from corners, or both. He takes the fedora off the stand, brushes it down. It's a little dusty, but in good condition. It really does look almost exactly like the one he'd given away. He taps the dust out of it, slaps it against the wall, and brushes it off again.
"Nice," he says, setting it on top of his head.
It's not like he's stealing. And even if he was, stealing is sort of what he does with his life anyway. And he steals dreams, which are far more important than hats.
The coat ends up being a lady's coat, and is a little worse for wear, moth-eaten and torn. He runs his hand down the arm.
Someone sighs, and Arthur spins around, gun drawn.
No one's there. Obviously, it was just another draft in an old house. Must be hard to get used to, he thinks. The draft had sounded sort of happy, though. Feminine, actually.
Arthur shakes his head and tucks the gun back into the waistband of his pants. You're being ridiculous, he tells himself. But he doesn't touch the coat again.
He goes to the really old wardrobe and pries the door open. There's no Narnia in here, just a bunch of clothes on hangers, in plastic bags. Suits, jackets, dresses, and other things that he can buy for himself if he wants them.
But Arthur's need for clothes is a pragmatic one: he dresses for whatever his jobs require. This stuff is really cool, but it's not necessary.
There's a pack of cigarettes on the shelf. That's actually really weird, because most everything in this house is old, but these are pretty new. The strangest thing is that they're his brand.
Or, his old brand, now that he thinks about it. He hasn't lit up in about three years. He'd quit the day he couldn't finish his morning run, and had never gone back.
But there's a gold lighter next to the pack. He picks it up, turns it over in his hand. Scrolling letters are etched into the front of it, and A, an ampersand, and an N. He doesn't know what the "N" stands for.
"Well," he murmurs aloud to himself, "you don't know what the A stands for either, really."
He hasn't even realized that he's tapping a cigarette out of the box until it's already between his lips. The taste of it surprises him. The flick of the lighter does, too. Especially since, why does this lighter even work? Jesus. It must be ancient.
He inhales sharply and shoves the pack, and the lighter, into the pocket of his pajamas. He takes another look around the attic, at all these lost treasures. Smoke blurs his vision as he exhales.
"Well," he says, plucking the cigarette from his lips and tipping the ashes, "that was fun."
He goes back to the stairs and turns around to descend, grabbing the hanging light-chain on his way. Before he pulls it and kills the light, he catches sight of the blond, bob-haired doll. Both of her blue, glass eyes are open now.
** ** ** **
Arthur is sitting on an old, carved wooden chair, cleaning his gun and smoking, when Eames wakes up with a cough. He looks rumpled and still tired.
This is a tough business they're in, after all.
"Wish you'd get more sleep," Arthur tells him. "It's only dawn yet. We got some time."
Eames is giving him a funny look. He sits up on the sofa and asks, "When did you start smoking again?"
Arthur sighs. Nag nag nag. But he doesn't answer, 'cause if he thinks too hard about it, he's gonna get a headache. A headache is the last thing he needs. "Got a whole deck in my pocket. Want one?"
"No. Thank you." Eames is still giving him a side-eye like there's something funny.
"What?" Arthur says. "See anything green?"
"Where did you get the hat?" Eames asks.
"Quit being such a bunny." Hat this, smoking that, it never ends with the third degree around here.
Eames gets up off the sofa and walks over to him. Arthur pulls the gasper out from between his teeth and rolls his eyes, because, oh, here it comes now, some kind of lecture. Damned if they haven't been down this road before. He can't remember when, though.
"Fine," he says, and looks around for his ashtray to stub the ember out. Shit. There's an ashtray around here somewhere, there has to be.
Eames takes the cigarette from him and crushes it out on the floor.
"Hey, asshole," Arthur says, rising from the chair to meet him, "what the fuck was that? These are hardwood floors, you know how much work that is? Jesus."
"Arthur," Eames says. His voice is soft. "Look. I know there's a part of your past where you go when you've got something on your mind. I understand. It took me a few years, but I get it. All right? But this feels a bit different to the Arthur that I know."
"Shush, okay?" Arthur says. Eames is worried and Arthur wants to let him know that he's got this, this is just eggs in the coffee. He puts his hand to the back or Eames's head and draws him in. Kisses his temple, firm and lingering. Then chucks him under the chin with his knuckles.
"That was," Eames says, "well, quite proprietary of you, Arthur. I'm just going to go put our bags into the car. All right? By the time we get to the winding roads, we'll be able to see them. We're on the eastern side. We'll be fine. But we should hurry. Stay here, will you?"
"Sure," Arthur says. "Anything you say. You might wanna pin your diapers on before you go outside. Looks pretty cold."
"Pin my... Oh. Yes, you too, Arthur. Get dressed."
He has to laugh. Eames can be so goofy sometimes, but he's crazy over him, just dizzy about him.
Eames gets dressed in a hurry and then starts taking all their bags outside. Arthur is in no such hurry. He tucks his gat into the back of his pajama bottoms again and parts the curtains to look outside. Eames isn't just packing their stuff into old getaway bucket sitting outside. He's also talking on the phone to someone.
He turns back to the house for a glance, and Arthur ducks behind the curtains quickly.
What the hell? Who is Eames talking to out there? Is he trying to get someone else to come here, or something? To come into their home? Their safe place? Doesn't he know how dangerous it is to let anyone else know about this house?
"God, what are you thinking?" Arthur whispers. He parts the curtains again. Eames is shoving things into the car, haphazard and careless, yammering on the phone like it's something important. His free hand is flailing around like he's trying to make some kind of goddamn point.
Arthur doesn't like any of this.
He's still not dressed when Eames comes back in. Just pajamas, slippers, his hat, deck of cigs and lighter in his pocket, and gat in his waistband. Just where the hell does Eames think they're going?
"Who were you talking to?" Arthur asks. He keeps his voice nice and even, because Eames has been acting just a little crazy here and he doesn't want to upset him.
"To Yusuf. I've got some answers." Eames hurries into the kitchen to get the bag of groceries they'd left there the night before. "Come on, let's get out of here."
Anger burns up inside him, sudden and furious. Why hadn't they unpacked their groceries? It was like they had intended to go running out of here the whole time. "Why do you want to leave?" he asks as Eames comes back from the kitchen. "Why do you hate our house?"
Eames stops short. His eyes are wide, frightened, a little. Arthur is honestly sorry he shouted, but Eames can be such a wet blanket sometimes.
"Arthur." Eames approaches slowly, like Arthur's the one losing his marbles here. "Yusuf says a bad batch of Somnacin has been going around. Highly unstable. Combusts easily in high altitudes, any of this ringing a bell?"
"Right, the broken bottles. See? No big deal. I told you. We're fine here."
"It's also causing side effects in high altitudes as well, where there's less oxygen. Paranoia, tremors, fever. That's exactly how I feel. Mild delusions, hallucinations, somnambulism. That's you, Arthur."
"That's ridiculous."
Eames drops the groceries on the floor and rushes over to him. Arthur doesn't have time to react – not that he'd know how to react anyway. Eames cups his face in his palms, then slides his hands around to the back of his neck, grips him hard.
"I need you, Arthur. You're my point; I can't do this alone. Please don't fail me."
Fail. The word is like a bucket of ice down his chest. He grabs onto Eames's wrists, like he's anchoring himself there. "I won't fail you. I won't. What do you need? Anything. You know that's why I'm here."
"I need you to help me get out of here. To get back down the mountain."
"Fine. Yes, of course I can do that. I'll go cut the genny..."
"Fuck the electricity. It's crazy that it worked in the first place, it won't even last."
"Something will short out," Arthur insists. "The house could burn." And, christ, that hurts. It tears something up inside of him. This beautiful home, the blue painted shingles, the immaculate winding stairs. But Eames is holding him in place with his eyes, his almost deadly focus.
Arthur is very open to taking suggestions and is nowhere near as stubborn as his reputation implies; going with the flow is actually his thing. He's adaptive. However, no one else has the ability to hold him in a place or move him from one quite the way Eames does.
Arthur swallows hard; his throat feels tight. "Let's go."
He doesn't even get dressed. Just throws his overcoat on, steps into his shoes, and they're both out the door. A blast of cold, dry air hits him and he coughs. Jesus, why had he picked up that stupid pack of cigarettes? He ditches them, along with the lighter, on the porch as they leave.
"Lose the hat," Eames says. "It's not yours."
He takes it off, reluctant, strangely aching for something he can't name. When he puts the hat down, inside the door, he does so gently.
Eames closes the door behind them. The porch light flickers out. Arthur hears the entire house power down, everything shutting off as if they generator had been cut suddenly. It sounds like a sigh. The lights go dark, probably for the last time.
** ** ** **
Arthur wakes up alone in the car. Twilight now, the fading colors of the sky visible through the fog on the windshield. He can hardly believe he slept through the turn-off from the highway and Eames parking them here – wherever "here" is. He opens the door and steps out. It's freezing, but the air does feel fuller, heavier. His own head feels clear now. Bad reaction to Somnacin, he remembers. Not the first time, for any of them.
They're parked outside a shitty strip mall and Arthur is, in fact, still in pajamas. Eames is nowhere in sight. Arthur pulls out his phone and dials him.
Eames picks up on the third ring and says, "What? You all right?"
Arthur whispers, "Do you like scary movies?"
"Fucker," Eames answers, and ends the call.
Arthur redials.
"What, I'm busy," Eames huffs at him.
"The call is coming from inside your pants."
"I'm not answering again," Eames says, and hangs up.
Arthur chuckles at that and then texts him: Where are you and what are you dong?
Eames texts, What am I dong indeed.
"Shit," Arthur mutters, and types, DOING.
He waits for about five minutes with no answer. Finally his phone pings. Eames's message reads, Buying you things. And getting erections to the closest hotel. Before Arthur can answer, Eames texts again, Fuck, directions. But erections too.
Arthur texts back, OK. I'll drive from here on and you can give me erections.
Eames texts, Sounds dangerous.
A few minutes later, Arthur looks out the window and spies him coming from one of the many doors. He considers getting out of the car, hiding behind it, and leaping out when Eames goes to look for him. That would be priceless.
Then he sees that Eames is carrying a cardboard pizza box, and one of Arthur's canvas bags in his other hand. Instead, he gets out of the car to help him.
"I've got it," Eames says when Arthur takes the pizza off his hands. "Get back in the car, you'll freeze."
Arthur gets behind the wheel this time, and Eames gives him directions, and not erections. They eat on the way. Eames falls asleep right after his second slice of pizza, and Arthur relies on his scribbled notes to find the hotel.
It's dark by the time they get there. Eames wakes, stretching, and tries to smooth his hair down. They get their bags out of the car and head up to their room.
It's a nice enough room, as hotels generally are. Clean, quiet, inoffensive.
Boring, Arthur thinks.
He's designed countless dream hotels and walked their halls for more of his life than he cares to remember, awake and asleep. He knows their structure in real life, knows their mazes and tricks in the dream world. Their teams always work with hotels a lot. Unless one had been extraordinary in some way, or spectacularly beautiful, Arthur is mostly just used to them. They don't affect him in any particular way.
But tonight, in this flat, muted, square room with its earth tones and non-style, he feels inexplicably melancholy.
Eames goes into the shower. He invites Arthur, and Arthur considers the offer. But in the end, he'd rather be alone, and he doesn't exactly know why.
When he hears the water running, he parts the brown curtains, lifts the white blinds, and stares out the window to a parking lot. Some buildings loom across the way, blocking the sky. Square, modern ones in beige and glass.
Tonight, perhaps, in a dream, he'll build his own house and walk its halls. Make up a fantastic staircase that winds into a figure eight. He'll create something beautiful and revel in the details. He's been in the business for so long; it seems like an age since he's dreamed something up just for art's sake.
Maybe that's what it is. Maybe I'm in a dry spell.
It's not, though, and he knows it. His fingers drift to his side, where two puncture marks are already starting to scab over, and five, wide-spread bruises color his hip.
Rat bites. Probably fell onto or walked into... five different things.
The bad batch of Somnacin, the altitude, these explain everything. Nothing is really left to pointless and morbid imaginings.
The sound of a sigh as the genny had cut off and the house powered down, though... It still leaves him feeling sad.
Eames comes out of the shower and tells him, "All yours."
"Thanks." Arthur continues staring out the window.
Eames is quiet for a moment or two; Arthur can feel his eyes on his back. He hears him sit down on the bed and knows that A Talk is coming. He's just not sure what it's going to be about. Probably about why he's sulking over nothing, staring out of windows. But surely he's entitled to a little battle fatigue once in a while.
"So," Eames says. "You said something to me yesterday and I've been giving it some thought."
Arthur nods. He'd said a lot of things, most of them teasing, until the effects of the bad compound had started to rattle them both.
"You said that it might not be a bad idea to, you know, actually get a place. An actual safe house where we could go at any time, off the grid. We could go separately or together depending on the job, but ideally, no one else would know about it. Just us. Well. That's not a bad idea, really."
Arthur smiles out the window. Something kind of aches, a little different from the sighing "goodbye" of leaving the house.
"It could be, you know," Eames says, stammering a little, "it could be a lovely place, the same style of the one we just left. We could look for something similar. With less treacherous roads. Which is not to say that you chose a bad place, I don't mean it like that at all."
"It was a bad decision," Arthur says. "I really should have thought of the roads. If we'd had to really speed away down there, we might not have made it."
"Well. So not on a mountain, then. We could research. Find the right place. Get a generator so we won't be on any grids. No address. It wouldn't be easy. I mean, I know this last house was a rare find. But it's possible and if we could find something like it, then we could go halves with it."
"That's a good idea," Arthur says. "Actually it's a great idea. I'm glad you thought of it."
"You thought of it," Eames reminds him.
They both fall silent, while Arthur considers how he feels. He can't tell if he's lost something or gained something.
"I got you something," Eames says. The bag on the bed rustles around as he digs around in it. "It's not exactly the same, but. It was the only one I could find."
Arthur turns, smiling now, and joins him on the bed, crossing one leg under him. Eames sets the fedora on top of his head and adjusts it so the brim is low.
"Thanks," Arthur says.
"It suits you. When you were a kid, when I first saw you like this, I wondered what the hell you were on about with the hats and briefcases and suits. But no one pulls it off quite like you do. Perhaps this one isn't as lucky as your original one, but it looks nice."
"Luck is created, not inherent," Arthur says. "I don't have anything for you, though."
"Don't you?" Eames asks, grinning, and pulls him onto the bed, running his finger along the buttons of his top.
Arthur, like anyone, gets into these rare, sullen moods occasionally. Sometimes his childhood comes blazing back into him, all violence and loss. Sometimes it's over Mal, or it's a weird reaction to any aspect of the job, or because life forces him to leave things behind. Sometimes it's just because—and this one is hard for him to admit—he's human. When he gets into them, his one rule is that he likes to be left alone until he works it out.
Eames is the only one allowed to break that rule.
** ** ** **
My Blue Heaven
Creepy little song, eh? Rumored to be not about a couple and their child, but rather a threesome arrangement.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 05:53 am (UTC)I thought the house had possessed Arthur for a minute there, I have to say... But then it turned out to be bad Somnacin.
Also, Arthur's little slip about them getting a place, and then Eames running with it but still using the term "safe house"... Boys, you know what you are to each other and yet you still play these semantics games... *sigh* But then, it suits them to do that.
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Date: 2011-02-15 05:56 am (UTC)I'm still up in the air whether it was Somnacin or not. But that's up to anyone and everyone's interpretation. :D There are always so many ways to look at things like that. There seems to be so many times, even in RL, when there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for things. But it somehow never sums everything up. I wonder. :D
I put a link to the actual song too, that i only just added. It's a creepy little ditty! ^_^
I'm happy that you liked this one!
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:14 am (UTC)And I laughed and laughed until I had too stop laughing because I was way too fucking skeeved out on the creepy stuff.
AND THEN YOU EXPLAINED IT WITH SCIENCE and that made it so much better, because your stories have always been about bad things that could technically still happen to people in reality (well, the reality that includes dreamsharing, anyway).
Eames and Arthur are amazing. I want to curl up inside of their relationship and live there now. <3 I love the insights you gave to Arthur's character, with his rules and how Eames breaks all of them!
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:25 am (UTC)And I highly recommend falling onto an air mattress with the hole still open. Because I am twelve, it never fails to amuse me. If you do it right, it sounds like Inception. BRRRRRRRM.
SO HAPPY that you got skeeved and creeped out. Boy, I love skeevy and creepy.
I'm pretty pragmatic myself. I love to get scared and think about creepy possibilities, ghosts and things like that. I almost always find a logical explanation for them, and if I can't, then it's probably just because I haven't looked at all the information.
BUT.
I equally love it when no explanation quite measures up and logic has to concede defeat. :D
I kind of want to curl up in the middle of
themtheir relationship toomenage a troisIt's all very sweet and not naughty at all. ^_^;;Thank you, as always, so much! :D
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:39 am (UTC)I love that, for a moment there, you had Arthur speaking and thinking in his Brick!voice but it was so so gradual I almost didn't notice it, like how Arthur doesn't notice it until Eames starts giving him strange looks.
Oh, oh! The whole thing about Arthur's rules...and how "No one else, not a single other soul on earth, is allowed to pin his hands above his head." Or how Eames is allowed to top Arthur, allowed to kiss Arthur, allowed to fuss over him and be a nancy-pants in front of him. That was SO PERFECT. I just love their relationship as you've written it SO MUCH. (Plus THEIR "safe house" hehe)
I liked that the boys got to be mischievous for once! Or, well, Arthur did because Eames was too busy being a nancy-pants (the phrase made me laugh).
And the fedora. The image of a beautiful man in a fedora...hehe
The ambiguity of the whole thing was a perfect touch, too. I'm wondering if Arthur was "possessed" or if it really WAS just the bad Somnacin or what. It just adds an extra level of creepy to something that has already given me the heebi-jeebies haha (I'm just as much, if not more, of a nancy-pants as Eames so guess who'll be using a nightlight tonight haha)
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:09 pm (UTC)Rose Red, I keep getting mixed up with Rose Madder. But now that I'm thinking of it, I don't think I actually even saw Rose Red. O_O I thought I had, but I realize now I didn't. Hmm.
You know what, I'm wondering, too, what was really going on. I like either interpretation. Cracky science, ghosts, past lives, really anything. :)
I had fun writing nancy-pants!Eames, too. He can obviously kill an army with the force of awesomeness, but one little possessive ghost and he's all WAAHH ARTHUR. ;D Hehe.
I'm really glad you liked this. Thank you! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:42 am (UTC)The hair on the back of my neck is standing up. Strange lights and ghostly music, those I can cope with, no problem, but the huge handprint and the weird bite mark? Spooky. And freaky dolls always make my skin crawl.
Arthur in a hat has always been a delightful idea, but you've managed to make it deliciously creepy. I was only picturing him as a 1920s gangster earlier today, after being reminded of the Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 - pinstripe suit, fancy hat, spats and a tommy gun. Now you've put the appropriate lingo in his mouth and made me very happy. (The hair's still standing up on the back of my neck though. *g*)
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:12 pm (UTC)Arthur in a hat is the best thing ever. JGL himself carries off the gangster look beautifully. I'm so happy when
Rian Johnsonfilmmakers exploit this wonderful opportunity.I'm happy that you loved this, thank you so much! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:51 am (UTC)Awesome fic. Love the descriptions of Arthur's barriers, and how Eames can get past all of them. Plus Eames being freaked out and Arthur loving the house- only Arthur could get excited about being in The House By The Cemetery :) Plus the subtle haunting/vampirism/phantasms were creepy as hell. Love it!
btw- Wonky text predictions for the win!
btw again- MY BLUE HEAVEN is a creepy-arsed song. I think it's the crackling and static- it sounds so old....
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:15 pm (UTC)Predictive text is my new favorite thing. I think it cam make even the most hardened criminals* hilarious and awkward.
That song is the bomb, right? So spooky!
*LOL hardened criminals. ^_^;; Hehee. Hardened criminals.
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Date: 2011-02-15 07:12 am (UTC)Loved the illusions to the other previous fics too :)
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 08:06 am (UTC)I would absolutely love to read some more scary/supernatural stories like this, but then anything else you write of A and E would just be awesome :) Now I'm off to sleep, hopefully I'll dream of this story, that would be fucking awesome.
anywho, another fantastic fic, keep up the great work! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:19 pm (UTC)I think the next one might have some kind of creepy/supernatural but maybe perfectly explainable element. I kind of had fun doing that here.
Anyway, thanks! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 08:16 am (UTC)Also, those texts had me cracking up! You did an awesome job with this fic!!
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:20 pm (UTC)I really don't know if it was haunted or not. I never actually made up my mind. ^_^ Heh.
Predictive text is my new crack, I love it. :) Thank you so much, I'm glad you liked it! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 09:22 am (UTC)Also I'm snagging one of your observations about Arthur for the fic I'm working on. I hope you don't mind. It's very on target.
This right here is perfection:
Eames is allowed to punch him, though. So when Eames is coming down the hall looking like a pissed off wet cat, wrapped in his own blanket, and Arthur jumps out at him from behind the corner, he fully expects to get punched.
Eames yells in surprise again at the same time that his fist connects with Arthur's mouth. Even as Arthur falls flat on his back, dazed, his lip split, he's still finding it really fucking hilarious.
Because somewhere deep inside, Eames knows he can't punch a ghost. He must have known he was really punching Arthur in the face, because he'd pulled the hell out of that one. If he hadn't, Arthur would be looking into dental work tomorrow, or, alternately, he would be in a coma. Eames could easily have cooled him with one shot.
And damn. This story was amazing as always.
I actually really like the excuse for their nerves and behavior.I don't know exactly what Somnacin is made of, but it's totally plausible that it explodes and makes you hallucinate right? Right? Right.
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:23 pm (UTC)Oh, totally, snag whatever you'd like to snag! Is the quoted part the observation that you liked? That Eames could knock him on his ass? :) Hehe. Or was it something else? Please feel free!
Somnacin is made of applied phlebotinum, isn't it? :D
Anyways, thank you! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 11:18 am (UTC)oh and is this connected to another fic? Arthur's fedora that he gave away?
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:25 pm (UTC)There could be ghosts? I'm not sure either way. I did have a lot of fun playing around with the possibility though. :D
Very glad this made you happy! Thank you! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 01:14 pm (UTC)And this a scary song. XD
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:27 pm (UTC)you know what, I'm not convinced it was somnacin either. But who knows! :D
Song is awesomely scary, right? :)
Thank you for reading and commenting! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 02:10 pm (UTC)You did a kickass job with this! Write on!
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:29 pm (UTC)Thanks so much! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 02:40 pm (UTC)First off, it's so incredibly creepy that the house was crushing on Arthur. I'm sorta like Mulder in that I'll always jump to the ~supernatural conclusions. This was not helped by what felt like another personality being superimposed over Arthur's, which I love. I also loved the calm-but-still-slightly-terrified way Eames reacted to it.
"Arthur," Eames says. His voice is soft. "Look. I know there's a part of your past where you go when you've got something on your mind. I understand. It took me a few years, but I get it. All right? But this feels a bit different to the Arthur that I know."
That is totally my favourite part.
Arthur's reverent treatment of the fedora, and then Eames replacing it also warmed the cockles of my heart. The two of them are so in love and it could bring tears to my eyes how well they work together, and yet still keep this fragile wall between them.
So much love for this 'verse -and for you!- as always.
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:32 pm (UTC)YES, X Files! Mulder was such a hysterical goofball. I loved him. :D Scully was my true hero though.
I personally feel like Arthur in a fedora is the best thing ever, and I love love love making Eames a tough, deadly, badass cuddlemuffin. Hehe. But I also still really like barriers and I think that they'd be sort of necessary for any kind of career criminal.
I'm so happy that you like this, the fics, the 'verse and everything. Thank you so much! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 03:43 pm (UTC)oh arthur you adorable dork. XD i can just imagine arthur being all cute and scaring the crap out of eames.
then it just went scaryyyyy :O hah i was coming up with all these supernatural explanations like there was a ghost possessing arthur or like one of arthur's ancestors lived in that house! which was why arthur liked the house so much and why alot of the stuff in the attic was what arthur would like and DOLLS ARE THE CREEPIEST THINGS EVER
also iphone autocorrect comes up with the funniest things XD XD XD
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:35 pm (UTC)I'm also glad you found this scary! I love being scary. :D Attics and dolls truly are nightmare fuel, right? And autocorrect is my new crack!
Anyway, thank you so much for this comment! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 03:58 pm (UTC)I was seriously terrified. I HAVE A REALLY VIVID IMAGINATION OKAY???
I *still* won't watch scary movies because I'll have bad dreams for weeks.
However, this was *really* well done. I loved reading it and reading into it. The ending makes all the scary totally worth it. Oh boys~
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 06:34 pm (UTC)Also, I love Arthur being a little shit and scaring Eames. It's totally something that I would do if I were in an old house like that (if I wasn't the one being scared, that is).
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Date: 2011-02-15 06:38 pm (UTC)LOL you know, I would be the same way as Arthur, just being a dick about it and scaring everyone. Actually I kind of do that. I also thought that in the movie, Arthur was the most fun. He was obviously the best at his job, but his eyes were full of mischief at times too. I kind of enjoy him like that.
I'm really glad you enjoyed this. Thank you so much! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 04:20 am (UTC)If you sleep, I will incept you to dream happy things. :D
Also, THANK YOU! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-15 10:22 pm (UTC)Your writing is fabulous because the house and the scenes unfolded themselves so intensely. It's interesting how you managed to write a haunted house story, a character study and a relationship story in one. ;)
Great job!
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Date: 2011-02-16 04:22 am (UTC)Wow, I'm thrilled that you got all of that out of this piece! I am always worried that I'm rushing it, skipping too much or adding too much, over-writing etc. This means so much to me. Thank you! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-16 01:19 am (UTC)Ok, but I really want to give a little more specificity.
First of all I love the fact this story is so open to the interpretation: there's no simple answer if all this strange things were just bad Somnacin, or this house was really hunted one. Arthur being mischievous was even more great than usual, but maybe I leave for little later. Another great thing is the atmosphere: you proved many times that you have a great ability to write about creepy things, but this story goes beyond all lines, I literally wanted to check if nothing is hidden behind the curtain. Especially when I was listening to this song, while reading. BRRR. I love also how funny things are mixing with the sad and serious one. And that's the point when I'm coming back to Arthur; he's really adorable while messing with Eames's head, but he also gives me creeps- the way he feels about this whole house is a disturbing one. And somehow you added all this pieces of information about him: some things we already know, like this one about being touched, but it works beautifully in this story, creating a great characterization for him. And I absolutely feel in love with this sentence: "But Arthur wants to make love to this house. And that, he must admit, is strange even for him." And text messages between Arthur and Eames are priceless, especially because I know this system of texting NEVER works. In order to get the word you're thinking about you need to type every letter by yourself. And somehow the idea of Eames sending all this messages when Arthur is not more than 100 meters away is cute. And Eames is generally sweet in this story, the moment he tells Arthur he needs his help to get out of the mountains is absolutely adorable.
Seems I'm totally enthusiastic about this story. Well, I knew that an idea as crazy as this one just has to work in your hands. But to leave something more than compliments there's somewhere a missing full stop.
So the house was mind-blowing creepy, the best sort, Eames was adorable and the whole story brought all kind of emotions to me. Really.
Amazing job!
Oh, and the fedora thing! I love it from the first story when it appears and it happens that I currently have a photo of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in fedora as a wallpaper on my laptop...
Ok, better I stop rambling here.
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Date: 2011-02-16 04:25 am (UTC)I'm glad this is suitably scary and I'm really glad that Mischievous!Arthur is coming across well. I really felt that he had mischief in his blood, in the movie. The way JGL portrayed him was really fun. You could tell he's the guy who gets the job done, but he doesn't sacrifice his good spirit to it, either. I felt throughout the movie that Arthur really loved his work.
I am addicted to damnyouautocorrect! :D I couldn't leave that out. :D
Oh please, I so badly need a wallpaper like that! Can you show me a link? I'd LOVE that! ^_^
Thanks so much for this comment!
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Date: 2011-02-16 02:05 am (UTC)I loved the little text messages messing up, too.
"Buying you things. And getting erections to the closest hotel." and "Whats taking you, can you not fondle the generator?" and the 'Fondling it currently' actually did make me giggle. *dork* *friends with physic majors*
Oh god, the doll! I have a completely rational fear of them, let no one tell you otherwise. Those things are freaky, terrifying, and just completely and utterly horrifying. And, my story wasn't even as simple as blinking dolls as it was moving dolls. But I liked what you did with the coat and feminine sigh. That was nice Narnia slip, too. ;D
I still love how you portray Arthur. Thank you for moving the stick in the ass that fandom decided to stick in there.
Eames would have a hard time putting his(not finishing that.) But seriously, I love his playfulness and wonder why people don't see that. Well, Eames has finally made an (vaguely) honest man of him.XOXO,
S.S.
PS, THE GHOSTS ENJOYED THE SHOW. YOU KNOW THEY DID.
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Date: 2011-02-16 04:28 am (UTC)Also a total damnyouautocorrect addict. :) So I had to have some fun with that.
Thank you so much for getting this interpretation of Arthur. See, I just thought he was such fun, in the movie. He was playful. Between him and Eames, they were the two most playful characters in the whole film. It was clear they were under a lot of pressure, and that they GOT SHIT DONE, but they struck me as the most relatable, the most humorous.
Truth be told, I've never even read Narnia, hehe. :D
And let me tell you, I grew up surrounded my creepyass dolls. They are terrifying!
OMG VOYEUR GHOSTS. I was thinking the same thing, they were totally like "*Whew* look at those hot men banging!" Hehee.
Thank you for reading, and for this comment! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-16 02:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 04:35 am (UTC)Man, Arthur had that coming, for being a wanker. I would have probably smacked him too. :)
I hereby incept you to dream of sexytimes instead of creepy music and biting houses! ^_^
Thank you so much for the comment! :)
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Date: 2011-02-16 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 04:36 am (UTC)Thank you so much! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-16 03:28 am (UTC)But mischievous Arthur is hilarious, and his and eames' relationship is lovely. And they get their own place by the end !
It was delicious to read, thank you very much
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Date: 2011-02-16 04:39 am (UTC)Oh, I'd love for them to get a non-biting, but totally gothic and creepy looking safe house together. I would spy on them, and, and... ^_^;; Hehe.
I'm so glad you liked this. Thank you! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-16 07:54 am (UTC)as usual, i loved this. i laughed so hard when eames punched arthur because it reminded me of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hYDYrdiYX8
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Date: 2011-03-14 12:28 am (UTC)I'm really glad you liked this fic, sorry this took me so long! ^_^
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Date: 2011-02-16 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-17 01:28 am (UTC)There are a couple of line that really creep me out. Am seriously glad that I didn't read it at 1am.
A question though, is Come Back With Me set in the same universe as the rest?
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