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Entry tags:
the third thursday
Simple Math [WIP]
Arthur/Eames | PG-13 | 2600 words [this part]
i.e. The Fake Boyfriends High School AU
thursday | friday | tuesday | the second friday | monday | the third tuesday | the third wednesday
This thing is almost 20k, asflsdkf;sd wtfffff
Eames is suspiciously absent at school the next morning.
Arthur tries not to read too much into it, but he still finds himself hovering at the end of the hall near Eames’ locker, pretending to go over a homework assignment. Every few minutes, his eyes flick up whenever something vaguely Eames-shaped passed by in his peripheral vision.
“What are you doing?”
He jumps, nearly dropping his psychology book. Ariadne’s standing behind him, her eyebrows pinched together.
“Nothing,” Arthur says. “Going over notes and stuff.”
“In the middle of a hallway a billion miles from your first period class?” She tilts her head. “This is Eames’ hallway, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t notice.” He feels completely stupid all of a sudden. The forced kiss from last night keeps playing over and over again in his head, followed by the sickening clench of embarrassment in his stomach every time he remembers the way Eames promptly scrubbed his mouth clean. Arthur thinks if he could just tell Eames that he was acting on too much wine, he’ll stop obsessing over it.
“Right.” She rolls her eyes. “He’s not here, anyway, I just saw him head to class.”
“Really?” A flare of anger sweeps through him. “But he--he never came to his locker.”
Ariadne smirks. “Thought you didn’t notice.”
“He always stops at his locker in the morning,” Arthur says. Of course Eames would be the one to avoid him after last night. He knew Arthur would coming looking for him, because Arthur’s just fucking predictable like that.
He kind of wants to put his fist through the wall.
“Hey.” Ariadne’s expression immediately turns soft. She touches his shoulder. “I’m sure it’s not a big deal. He’s probably just busy or got to school late.”
Arthur shrugs off her hand. “Whatever, yeah.” He shoves his psych book into his bag, jaw tight.
“How was the dinner date last night?”
“Wasn’t a date, and it was okay.” He’s not about to talk about it, not here. Not when he can’t even think about it without wanting to punch Eames.
“Just okay? Did you like his family?”
“Look, I need to get to class,” Arthur says without meeting her eyes, shrugging into his backpack. “I’ll see you later?”
She’s not fooled at all, Arthur knows, but she lets him go with a, “Yeah, okay, fine. I’ll text you.” He can hear that concerned lilt in her tone and knows she’ll eventually get the full story out of him. Just not today. Or this week. Or maybe even this century.
Fuck Eames. Fuck him. If he can just neatly avoid Arthur after one stupid, worthless kiss, then Arthur can avoid him, too, easily. No problem.
He slams his hand into the nearest locker and pretends it’s Eames’ face.
~
Arthur manages to go all day without so much as a glimpse of Eames. He stays clear of the cafeteria at lunch and doesn’t glance over when he hears some of the guys from the football team call after him. He’s not so predictable after all.
But then, right as he’s heading to the track for practice and not worrying about Eames’ fucking trig homework, he hears a female voice call out, “Hey, Arthur! Wait a sec!”
Arthur comes to an abrupt halt. The voice belongs to Catelyn Forbes, and there’s really only one reason she’d be wanting to talk to him. He looks over his shoulder at her, smiles tightly, and says, “Hi, Cate, what’s up?”
She’s a breathless blur of blond hair and green eyes as she rummages through her over-sized tote bag. “Sorry, I have some notes to give to Eames and I couldn’t find him today--could you give these to him for me? Pretty please?” Catelyn thrusts a couple pages of neon purple stationary into his hands. They appear to be scribbled notes about their scenes.
Arthur blinks. “He’s here today, I know he is,” he says. “Try the football field.” Eames would talk to her, of course--she didn’t accidentally make out with him on his parents’ back porch.
Catelyn shrugs. “I haven’t seen him, and we were supposed to run lines this afternoon. I figured he was sick or something. And you’re closer than the football field, so...” She smiles hopefully at him. “When you give those to him, could you also have him call me?”
I’m not talking to him today, or possibly ever again. “Okay,” Arthur hears himself reply, staring down at the papers.
“Thanks, Arthur, you’re awesome!” She pats his arm before running off.
Arthur sighs reluctantly, shoving the notes into his duffel bag.
~
He considers leaving the notes in Eames’ mailbox, or stuffing them under the windshield wipers of his car. But in the end, Arthur walks to the front door and stands on the front steps for several long moments, hating the fact that his heart pounds too heavily in his chest.
Arthur raises his hand to knock, then mutters, “Fuck it,” and opens the door. He’s never knocked before, and this isn’t a visit, it’s a quick drop-off that hopefully involves little to no conversation or eye contact.
The house is quiet, except for the faint sounds of music coming from upstairs on the third floor. As Arthur climbs the stairs, he can hear snippets of lyrics, and suddenly he realizes it’s Ian Curtis talking about how love will tear him apart. Heat creeps into Arthur’s cheeks; he’s had the complete BBC recordings of Joy Division downloaded to his laptop for a while now, ever since the summer before ninth grade. He’s still not really into them, but he likes a couple of songs all right.
Eames’ off-key voice floats down the hall as Arthur gets closer to his room. He’s a terrible singer, but his voice sounds absent, like he’s just singing along in between doing something else. The words fade in and out, punctuated with a loud, “Shit.”
Arthur’s mouth twitches against a smile. He quickly shakes his head, wincing, and takes a deep breath before pushing open Eames’ bedroom door.
Eames is pacing the length of floor between his closet and bed, shirtless and barefooted, wearing a pair of frayed black sweatpants. His worn copy of Hamlet is in one hand, his other making broad gestures as he mutters lines under his breath. At one point Eames stops, slaps himself in the face with the play, and swears under his breath.
Arthur just stands like an idiot in the doorway. His mouth has gone a little dry.
Then he clears his throat, and Eames’ head snaps up, eyes wide.
“The fuck?” he says, and promptly drops the play on the floor. “Don’t you knock?”
“Why the hell weren’t you in class?” Arthur demands, ignoring Eames’ question.
“For your information, I was in class. Didn’t realize I had to run my bloody schedule past you.”
“I never saw you.”
Eames bends down to grab the play, and the muscles across his shoulders stretch and flex beneath his skin. “Maybe you weren’t looking hard enough,” he says, but the words are almost lost in the music still blaring from the stereo.
Arthur just wishes he’d put a fucking shirt on. He’s starting to forget why he was so pissed off coming here with all this bare skin staring him in the face. It’s been years since Arthur’s seen Eames halfway naked, and Eames looks a lot different than he did when they were fourteen.
Not to mention there’s a goddamn tattoo splayed across his hip, disappearing into the waistband of his sweats. It looks like a bunch of Latin words smushed together in calligraphy writing.
Arthur folds his arms across his chest and glares at Eames. “Look, if you wanna be pissed at me for what happened last night, fine, whatever, but it wasn’t my fucking fault.”
Eames turns his back to Arthur as he switches off the stereo. “Wasn’t mine, either. My aunt just likes to take pictures, that’s all. We couldn’t exactly say no without raising suspicions, could we?”
“Then stop avoiding me.” Arthur doesn’t know where the words come from. He doesn’t even mean them.
“I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“Why the fuck would I even do that, Arthur?” Eames turns back around, mirroring Arthur’s stance. Unfortunately, it makes the lines of his biceps stand out in stark relief.
“Because you’re a coward who doesn’t realize a fake kiss when it happens.”
“’Fake?’ You call clinging to me as you shove your tongue down my throat ‘fake?’”
“I was trying to make it believable! I can be just as good an actor as you sometimes.”
There’s a tick in Eames’ jaw. “So you think I’ve been avoiding you all day because, what, I didn’t want to discuss you kissing me like you meant it? Is that it? Like I’m stupid enough to believe you wanted that kiss?”
Arthur tips his chin up. “Maybe,” he says, hating the way his chest goes tight.
They face off, neither one blinking, until something flickers in Eames’ eyes and his expression suddenly goes contrite.
“You’re right, Arthur,” he replies softly, taking slow steps toward him. “I did think it was real, and that’s what scares the shit out of me, knowing that there’s a chance you want me just as much as I want you.”
All the air rushes out of Arthur’s lungs. “I...you...seriously?”
“I couldn’t even look at you this morning without remembering the way you tasted.” Eames’ voice drops into a low, breathless whisper, and Arthur is suddenly dizzy with the overwhelming need to touch him. He’s almost close enough for Arthur to reach out and close his hands around Eames’ shoulders, sink his fingers into all that solid muscle.
“I--I thought you’d--”
“I always think about kissing you. It’s always there, in the back of my mind.”
Arthur can hardly think, can hardly string two words together when Eames is standing there, looking at him with dark blue eyes and licking slowly over his stupidly gorgeous lower lip as he leans closer and having that stupid fucking tattoo jesus christ--
Eames snorts loudly, ducking his head as he dissolves into laughter. He looks up at Arthur through his lashes. “Now that was good acting,” he says with a smirk.
For moment, Arthur is utterly speechless, his brain frantically trying to untangle itself while the rest of his body struggles to shake off the rush of want. He thinks about punching Eames, since he’s wanted to do it all day, but that would make it look like Arthur cares that Eames is faking shit. Which he doesn’t. He never has.
“I don’t know,” Arthur says evenly, forcing himself to smirk back. “I am a pretty damn good kisser. Maybe I really did fuck with your head.”
Eames’ eyes flare, his cheeks pink, but he doesn’t reply. Arthur knows it doesn’t mean anything, but it still gives him a jolt of satisfaction. He takes a step back and digs the two sheets of purple stationary out of his back pocket.
“Here. Call Cate.” He shoves the papers at Eames. Their fingers brush as Eames takes it from him.
“Why the hell didn’t she just call me herself?” Eames mutters under his breath.
“Because she thought you were home sick.”
He turns the notes over in his hands. Slowly, Eames sighs. Eyes downcast, he says, “My bloody alarm didn’t go off this morning. I was late to school.”
Arthur’s knocked speechless for the second time in ten minutes. “Okay,” he finally says.
“So.” Eames folds the papers up, throws them on his desk. “You want my trig?”
No. I’m calling this off. “Do you have it?”
He nods and goes to thumb through his books. “It’s not a lot today, we had a quiz.”
“How’d you do?”
“All right. Pretty sure I’m close to a full B in the class right now.”
A weird thrum of pleased warmth shivers through Arthur. He shoves the feeling aside as he takes the assignment Eames hands over. “My mom really likes your family. Just. Let your mom know she liked it. The dinner party, I mean.”
“Yeah, Aunt Caroline won’t stop talking about you.” Something like a tiny smile flickers at the corner of Eames’ mouth as he fidgets with the string ties of his sweatpants. Arthur watches the way his fingers tangle and untangle themselves in easy, smooth rotations.
“She’s really nice.”
“They all are. My mum’s sisters are the best.”
A door slams downstairs, and Rafe’s voice yells, “Eames! Mum says Arthur needs to move his car!”
“Shit,” Arthur winces, “I wasn’t gonna stay this long, I was just--gonna give you Cate’s notes.” He waves his hand toward Eames’ desk.
“I’m sure she doesn’t mind. She, ah...she adores you.” Eames runs a hand through his hair and grimaces. “But I guess you already knew that.”
Arthur shrugs. “It’s all right. I--I don’t mind.”
Eames finally meets his eyes. “Okay,” he says, and Arthur’s not really sure what they’re talking about anymore.
He leaves without saying anything else, until Laura stops him in the foyer.
“Arthur! You can just park behind me once I get into the garage, I wasn’t trying to make you leave, darling!” She beams at him, and Arthur can’t help smiling back awkwardly.
“I gotta get home,” he says, holding up Eames’ trig. “Just, uh, getting an assignment from Eames.”
“Oh, that reminds me! Caroline dropped these off earlier--she wanted me to give you and your mother copies.” Laura runs to the kitchen and comes back with an envelope, which she gives to Arthur.
They’re all pictures from the dinner party. Arthur’s pulse beats a little faster
“Thanks, Laura, I’m sure my mom will appreciate it.”
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” She laughs, adds, “Yes, I know you were just here for that, but you’re welcome to stay. I have an obscene amount of leftovers.”
Arthur shakes his head, makes the appropriate polite excuses, and finally slips out the door to his car. He sits behind the wheel with the photo envelope in his hands.
“Fine,” he mumbles, and opens it to flip through the various shots. The majority are general shots of Arthur talking to Eames’ family, or of Arthur and his mother.
But as he gets toward the back of the stack, all the pictures become exclusively him and Eames:
Eames whispering in his ear at the dinner table.
Arthur laughing and Eames’ head bent as he grins, their heads close together.
Eames’ arm around Arthur’s shoulders while Arthur smirks at him.
Eames watching Arthur with something strangely fond in his eyes.
Eames and Arthur kissing.
It’s the last picture in the bunch. For some reason, Aunt Caroline decided to frame them off-center, so that the lights and the garden take up most of the picture while the two of them are fitted into the far left corner. Eames’ hand looks huge and broad splayed against Arthur’s cheek, their mouths barely parted, and Eames’ expression is...soft. From the curve of his fingers to the way his eyelashes sweep over his cheeks, everything about Eames appears gentle and careful.
And Arthur...just looking at himself leaning into Eames makes Arthur’s cheek flush. Anyone laying eyes on this photo could see how much Arthur wasn’t faking it. Not by a long shot.
You can’t fake that kind of softness, either, a tiny voice inside his brain says.
Arthur bites his lip, skims the edge of his thumb over the line of Eames’ shoulders in the picture, then quickly puts the photos away.
He doesn’t look at them again.
Arthur/Eames | PG-13 | 2600 words [this part]
i.e. The Fake Boyfriends High School AU
thursday | friday | tuesday | the second friday | monday | the third tuesday | the third wednesday
This thing is almost 20k, asflsdkf;sd wtfffff
Eames is suspiciously absent at school the next morning.
Arthur tries not to read too much into it, but he still finds himself hovering at the end of the hall near Eames’ locker, pretending to go over a homework assignment. Every few minutes, his eyes flick up whenever something vaguely Eames-shaped passed by in his peripheral vision.
“What are you doing?”
He jumps, nearly dropping his psychology book. Ariadne’s standing behind him, her eyebrows pinched together.
“Nothing,” Arthur says. “Going over notes and stuff.”
“In the middle of a hallway a billion miles from your first period class?” She tilts her head. “This is Eames’ hallway, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t notice.” He feels completely stupid all of a sudden. The forced kiss from last night keeps playing over and over again in his head, followed by the sickening clench of embarrassment in his stomach every time he remembers the way Eames promptly scrubbed his mouth clean. Arthur thinks if he could just tell Eames that he was acting on too much wine, he’ll stop obsessing over it.
“Right.” She rolls her eyes. “He’s not here, anyway, I just saw him head to class.”
“Really?” A flare of anger sweeps through him. “But he--he never came to his locker.”
Ariadne smirks. “Thought you didn’t notice.”
“He always stops at his locker in the morning,” Arthur says. Of course Eames would be the one to avoid him after last night. He knew Arthur would coming looking for him, because Arthur’s just fucking predictable like that.
He kind of wants to put his fist through the wall.
“Hey.” Ariadne’s expression immediately turns soft. She touches his shoulder. “I’m sure it’s not a big deal. He’s probably just busy or got to school late.”
Arthur shrugs off her hand. “Whatever, yeah.” He shoves his psych book into his bag, jaw tight.
“How was the dinner date last night?”
“Wasn’t a date, and it was okay.” He’s not about to talk about it, not here. Not when he can’t even think about it without wanting to punch Eames.
“Just okay? Did you like his family?”
“Look, I need to get to class,” Arthur says without meeting her eyes, shrugging into his backpack. “I’ll see you later?”
She’s not fooled at all, Arthur knows, but she lets him go with a, “Yeah, okay, fine. I’ll text you.” He can hear that concerned lilt in her tone and knows she’ll eventually get the full story out of him. Just not today. Or this week. Or maybe even this century.
Fuck Eames. Fuck him. If he can just neatly avoid Arthur after one stupid, worthless kiss, then Arthur can avoid him, too, easily. No problem.
He slams his hand into the nearest locker and pretends it’s Eames’ face.
~
Arthur manages to go all day without so much as a glimpse of Eames. He stays clear of the cafeteria at lunch and doesn’t glance over when he hears some of the guys from the football team call after him. He’s not so predictable after all.
But then, right as he’s heading to the track for practice and not worrying about Eames’ fucking trig homework, he hears a female voice call out, “Hey, Arthur! Wait a sec!”
Arthur comes to an abrupt halt. The voice belongs to Catelyn Forbes, and there’s really only one reason she’d be wanting to talk to him. He looks over his shoulder at her, smiles tightly, and says, “Hi, Cate, what’s up?”
She’s a breathless blur of blond hair and green eyes as she rummages through her over-sized tote bag. “Sorry, I have some notes to give to Eames and I couldn’t find him today--could you give these to him for me? Pretty please?” Catelyn thrusts a couple pages of neon purple stationary into his hands. They appear to be scribbled notes about their scenes.
Arthur blinks. “He’s here today, I know he is,” he says. “Try the football field.” Eames would talk to her, of course--she didn’t accidentally make out with him on his parents’ back porch.
Catelyn shrugs. “I haven’t seen him, and we were supposed to run lines this afternoon. I figured he was sick or something. And you’re closer than the football field, so...” She smiles hopefully at him. “When you give those to him, could you also have him call me?”
I’m not talking to him today, or possibly ever again. “Okay,” Arthur hears himself reply, staring down at the papers.
“Thanks, Arthur, you’re awesome!” She pats his arm before running off.
Arthur sighs reluctantly, shoving the notes into his duffel bag.
~
He considers leaving the notes in Eames’ mailbox, or stuffing them under the windshield wipers of his car. But in the end, Arthur walks to the front door and stands on the front steps for several long moments, hating the fact that his heart pounds too heavily in his chest.
Arthur raises his hand to knock, then mutters, “Fuck it,” and opens the door. He’s never knocked before, and this isn’t a visit, it’s a quick drop-off that hopefully involves little to no conversation or eye contact.
The house is quiet, except for the faint sounds of music coming from upstairs on the third floor. As Arthur climbs the stairs, he can hear snippets of lyrics, and suddenly he realizes it’s Ian Curtis talking about how love will tear him apart. Heat creeps into Arthur’s cheeks; he’s had the complete BBC recordings of Joy Division downloaded to his laptop for a while now, ever since the summer before ninth grade. He’s still not really into them, but he likes a couple of songs all right.
Eames’ off-key voice floats down the hall as Arthur gets closer to his room. He’s a terrible singer, but his voice sounds absent, like he’s just singing along in between doing something else. The words fade in and out, punctuated with a loud, “Shit.”
Arthur’s mouth twitches against a smile. He quickly shakes his head, wincing, and takes a deep breath before pushing open Eames’ bedroom door.
Eames is pacing the length of floor between his closet and bed, shirtless and barefooted, wearing a pair of frayed black sweatpants. His worn copy of Hamlet is in one hand, his other making broad gestures as he mutters lines under his breath. At one point Eames stops, slaps himself in the face with the play, and swears under his breath.
Arthur just stands like an idiot in the doorway. His mouth has gone a little dry.
Then he clears his throat, and Eames’ head snaps up, eyes wide.
“The fuck?” he says, and promptly drops the play on the floor. “Don’t you knock?”
“Why the hell weren’t you in class?” Arthur demands, ignoring Eames’ question.
“For your information, I was in class. Didn’t realize I had to run my bloody schedule past you.”
“I never saw you.”
Eames bends down to grab the play, and the muscles across his shoulders stretch and flex beneath his skin. “Maybe you weren’t looking hard enough,” he says, but the words are almost lost in the music still blaring from the stereo.
Arthur just wishes he’d put a fucking shirt on. He’s starting to forget why he was so pissed off coming here with all this bare skin staring him in the face. It’s been years since Arthur’s seen Eames halfway naked, and Eames looks a lot different than he did when they were fourteen.
Not to mention there’s a goddamn tattoo splayed across his hip, disappearing into the waistband of his sweats. It looks like a bunch of Latin words smushed together in calligraphy writing.
Arthur folds his arms across his chest and glares at Eames. “Look, if you wanna be pissed at me for what happened last night, fine, whatever, but it wasn’t my fucking fault.”
Eames turns his back to Arthur as he switches off the stereo. “Wasn’t mine, either. My aunt just likes to take pictures, that’s all. We couldn’t exactly say no without raising suspicions, could we?”
“Then stop avoiding me.” Arthur doesn’t know where the words come from. He doesn’t even mean them.
“I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“Why the fuck would I even do that, Arthur?” Eames turns back around, mirroring Arthur’s stance. Unfortunately, it makes the lines of his biceps stand out in stark relief.
“Because you’re a coward who doesn’t realize a fake kiss when it happens.”
“’Fake?’ You call clinging to me as you shove your tongue down my throat ‘fake?’”
“I was trying to make it believable! I can be just as good an actor as you sometimes.”
There’s a tick in Eames’ jaw. “So you think I’ve been avoiding you all day because, what, I didn’t want to discuss you kissing me like you meant it? Is that it? Like I’m stupid enough to believe you wanted that kiss?”
Arthur tips his chin up. “Maybe,” he says, hating the way his chest goes tight.
They face off, neither one blinking, until something flickers in Eames’ eyes and his expression suddenly goes contrite.
“You’re right, Arthur,” he replies softly, taking slow steps toward him. “I did think it was real, and that’s what scares the shit out of me, knowing that there’s a chance you want me just as much as I want you.”
All the air rushes out of Arthur’s lungs. “I...you...seriously?”
“I couldn’t even look at you this morning without remembering the way you tasted.” Eames’ voice drops into a low, breathless whisper, and Arthur is suddenly dizzy with the overwhelming need to touch him. He’s almost close enough for Arthur to reach out and close his hands around Eames’ shoulders, sink his fingers into all that solid muscle.
“I--I thought you’d--”
“I always think about kissing you. It’s always there, in the back of my mind.”
Arthur can hardly think, can hardly string two words together when Eames is standing there, looking at him with dark blue eyes and licking slowly over his stupidly gorgeous lower lip as he leans closer and having that stupid fucking tattoo jesus christ--
Eames snorts loudly, ducking his head as he dissolves into laughter. He looks up at Arthur through his lashes. “Now that was good acting,” he says with a smirk.
For moment, Arthur is utterly speechless, his brain frantically trying to untangle itself while the rest of his body struggles to shake off the rush of want. He thinks about punching Eames, since he’s wanted to do it all day, but that would make it look like Arthur cares that Eames is faking shit. Which he doesn’t. He never has.
“I don’t know,” Arthur says evenly, forcing himself to smirk back. “I am a pretty damn good kisser. Maybe I really did fuck with your head.”
Eames’ eyes flare, his cheeks pink, but he doesn’t reply. Arthur knows it doesn’t mean anything, but it still gives him a jolt of satisfaction. He takes a step back and digs the two sheets of purple stationary out of his back pocket.
“Here. Call Cate.” He shoves the papers at Eames. Their fingers brush as Eames takes it from him.
“Why the hell didn’t she just call me herself?” Eames mutters under his breath.
“Because she thought you were home sick.”
He turns the notes over in his hands. Slowly, Eames sighs. Eyes downcast, he says, “My bloody alarm didn’t go off this morning. I was late to school.”
Arthur’s knocked speechless for the second time in ten minutes. “Okay,” he finally says.
“So.” Eames folds the papers up, throws them on his desk. “You want my trig?”
No. I’m calling this off. “Do you have it?”
He nods and goes to thumb through his books. “It’s not a lot today, we had a quiz.”
“How’d you do?”
“All right. Pretty sure I’m close to a full B in the class right now.”
A weird thrum of pleased warmth shivers through Arthur. He shoves the feeling aside as he takes the assignment Eames hands over. “My mom really likes your family. Just. Let your mom know she liked it. The dinner party, I mean.”
“Yeah, Aunt Caroline won’t stop talking about you.” Something like a tiny smile flickers at the corner of Eames’ mouth as he fidgets with the string ties of his sweatpants. Arthur watches the way his fingers tangle and untangle themselves in easy, smooth rotations.
“She’s really nice.”
“They all are. My mum’s sisters are the best.”
A door slams downstairs, and Rafe’s voice yells, “Eames! Mum says Arthur needs to move his car!”
“Shit,” Arthur winces, “I wasn’t gonna stay this long, I was just--gonna give you Cate’s notes.” He waves his hand toward Eames’ desk.
“I’m sure she doesn’t mind. She, ah...she adores you.” Eames runs a hand through his hair and grimaces. “But I guess you already knew that.”
Arthur shrugs. “It’s all right. I--I don’t mind.”
Eames finally meets his eyes. “Okay,” he says, and Arthur’s not really sure what they’re talking about anymore.
He leaves without saying anything else, until Laura stops him in the foyer.
“Arthur! You can just park behind me once I get into the garage, I wasn’t trying to make you leave, darling!” She beams at him, and Arthur can’t help smiling back awkwardly.
“I gotta get home,” he says, holding up Eames’ trig. “Just, uh, getting an assignment from Eames.”
“Oh, that reminds me! Caroline dropped these off earlier--she wanted me to give you and your mother copies.” Laura runs to the kitchen and comes back with an envelope, which she gives to Arthur.
They’re all pictures from the dinner party. Arthur’s pulse beats a little faster
“Thanks, Laura, I’m sure my mom will appreciate it.”
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” She laughs, adds, “Yes, I know you were just here for that, but you’re welcome to stay. I have an obscene amount of leftovers.”
Arthur shakes his head, makes the appropriate polite excuses, and finally slips out the door to his car. He sits behind the wheel with the photo envelope in his hands.
“Fine,” he mumbles, and opens it to flip through the various shots. The majority are general shots of Arthur talking to Eames’ family, or of Arthur and his mother.
But as he gets toward the back of the stack, all the pictures become exclusively him and Eames:
Eames whispering in his ear at the dinner table.
Arthur laughing and Eames’ head bent as he grins, their heads close together.
Eames’ arm around Arthur’s shoulders while Arthur smirks at him.
Eames watching Arthur with something strangely fond in his eyes.
Eames and Arthur kissing.
It’s the last picture in the bunch. For some reason, Aunt Caroline decided to frame them off-center, so that the lights and the garden take up most of the picture while the two of them are fitted into the far left corner. Eames’ hand looks huge and broad splayed against Arthur’s cheek, their mouths barely parted, and Eames’ expression is...soft. From the curve of his fingers to the way his eyelashes sweep over his cheeks, everything about Eames appears gentle and careful.
And Arthur...just looking at himself leaning into Eames makes Arthur’s cheek flush. Anyone laying eyes on this photo could see how much Arthur wasn’t faking it. Not by a long shot.
You can’t fake that kind of softness, either, a tiny voice inside his brain says.
Arthur bites his lip, skims the edge of his thumb over the line of Eames’ shoulders in the picture, then quickly puts the photos away.
He doesn’t look at them again.