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Entry tags:
monday afternoon
Simple Math [WIP]
Arthur/Eames | PG-13 | 2600 words [this part]
i.e. The Fake Boyfriends High School AU
|previous chapters|
I'm sorry Arthur's such a douche. :( He's seventeen. :(
Arthur doesn’t mean to stop. He’s late to practice, as he’s been late to everything today, and he’s well on his way to getting an extra three miles tacked on to his warm-up.
But the doors to the auditorium are wide open, and he can’t help glancing inside. Half a dozen people sit scattered in the front row seats, watching the stage intently.
And there, alone, front and center, is Eames, pacing the length of the stage as he gives the famous soliloquy that must be burned into his brain by now.
He’s utterly magnetic, face hard yet desperate as he struggles with his internal conflict, biting out each word as if it’s ripped from inside him. Eames is Hamlet, and to watch his transformation is...
Arthur leans against the doorway, mouth suddenly dry. He’s seen school productions before, but Eames is on a different level all together. Christ, after all these years, Eames is just now showing the school what he’s capable of, how fucking talented he can be without a damn football in his hands.
Arthur’s duffel bag slides down his arm as he drops into an aisle seat in the very back row. He watches every minute of Eames on stage, all thoughts of practice gone.
“With this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action. Soft you now, the fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remembered,” Eames demands to the room at large, then pauses, looking out into the auditorium.
He looks straight at Arthur.
Eames blinks a few times, slipping out of character. He drops his hand to his side and clears his throat.
“Better, yeah?” he says to Mr. Winslow, the drama coach, who sits in the front row taking notes.
“Much better!” Winslow says. “But you’re losing your momentum halfway through, I’d punch it a little more.”
Eames nods, frowning in thought, and Arthur thinks, heart pounding, Fuck him, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Catelyn gets up from her seat and hops up onto the stage, saying something about running through act two again. The guys playing Polonius and Laertes get up as well, but Eames shrugs, waves his hand vaguely at something, and the next thing Arthur knows, Eames is jogging up the aisle toward him.
Arthur suddenly feels horribly awkward. There’s no reason for him to be here at all, Eames was going to drop by his house later to give him his trig, and Eames knows he’s supposed to be in practice--
But Eames actually grins at him before crouching down beside Arthur’s seat at the end of the aisle. It feels like a real, geniune smile, and warmth blooms in Arthur’s belly.
“Hey,” Eames says softly. “You caught all that.” It’s not a question; he knew the moment Arthur walked in the door.
Arthur chews his lip, fighting a smile of his own. “Yeah, I did. It was--” He clears his throat. “You’re wasted on a shit high school production.”
Eames’ eyes flare, and then he laughs. “Don’t say that too loud, Winslow will have your head,” he says, hands folded on the edge of Arthur’s seat, just enough so that his fingertips dangle along the top of Arthur’s thigh.
He looks--Eames looks happy. Like, a giddy, surprised, excited happy. Arthur wonders how much of it is because he’s here, sitting in the back row without ever asking Eames’ permission.
“You’re not in practice,” he says instead, resisting the stupid urge to play with Eames’ fingers.
“Coach lets me sit out Mondays for rehearsals. As it gets closer to opening night, I’ll probably miss more, maybe even just sit on the sidelines during games. He’s not pleased with me, but he’ll live.” Eames raises an eyebrow. “You’re not in practice, either.”
“No, I, uh.” He glances away. “Just...wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”
“‘Fuss’?” Eames asks. He wrinkles his nose at Arthur. “Is their a fuss about this thing? The only people who will attend opening night are Winslow’s classes, and that’s because their grade depends upon it. Well, them and my mum, of course.”
“And your aunts,” Arthur adds with a smirk.
Something flits across Eames’ expression that makes Arthur’s heart beat faster. “Yeah, my aunts,” he says, quiet, like they’re sharing a secret.
“Eames, it’s your line!” Catelyn yells from the stage.
He huffs, wincing like he’s genuinely irritated to be leaving Arthur’s presence. “So, I’ll just--I’ll see you later, at your place? This afternoon?”
They have a schedule, and Eames knows it. He doesn’t need to ask, and yet Arthur nods and says, “Yeah, my house,” as if they both need reminding.
They just look at each other for a long moment, not quite smiling, until Catelyn yells again and Eames ducks his head, laughing almost shyly.
“Fuck,” he whispers, and then, as he rises to his feet, he leans down and brushes his mouth over Arthur’s--just like he did earlier on the baseball field.
Arthur doesn’t dare breathe.
Eames is gone a second later, not glancing back over his shoulder as he runs back to the stage. He grabs a copy of the play from someone, and Arthur sees Catelyn whisper something in Eames’ ear that makes him grin sheepishly and shrug.
Arthur touches his knuckles to his mouth, thinking, I told him to do that, anyway, but his heart’s not in it. He lets himself smile behind his hand, because no one can see.
He scoops his bag off the floor and hauls ass to practice.
~
Things go to shit when Arthur pulls a muscle in his calf.
He comes down wrong on a rock in the path and trips, wrenching his right leg just before he catches himself. He pauses to catch his breath, stretches his leg and winces, but it’s nothing, he’s had much worse.
Unfortunately, his coach sees the whole thing go down and demands to look Arthur over.
“I’m fine,” Arthur says, gritting his teeth as Coach Nadler massages gently over the back of his calf muscles.
“This doesn’t feel fine and you don’t look fine.” His coach stands back, mouth in a firm line. “You’re not putting your full weight on it.”
Arthur glares and promptly straightens, but a sharp pain bites its way up his leg. He hisses, which makes his coach sigh.
“That’s what I thought,” Coach Nadler says. “Go ice it up. You’re out for the rest of the week.”
There’s a race on Thursday, one Arthur’s practically a shoe-in to win. “But, the race at Lawson--”
“You won’t be racing at all, period, if you don’t take care of yourself.” Coach pats Arthur’s shoulder. “Go home, ice your leg, and take it easy."
Arthur’s never been put out of commission before. There are only so many races in a year, and this is his last year for any of them. A stupid pulled muscle shouldn’t be stopping him like this; he should’ve known better than to not pay attention to his surroundings.
He goes home frustrated and angry, both at himself and at the throbbing pain in his leg. Arthur dumps his bag in the foyer, limping into the kitchen for ice.
His mother is standing at the counter, sorting through the day’s mail. Her eyes go wide when she sees Arthur. “What happened?”
“You’re home early,” Arthur says, ignoring her. He’d really hoped she wouldn’t have to see him like this; he doesn’t like his mother to fuss over him about stupid stuff. She’s got enough to worry about.
She rolls her eyes, immediately going to the freezer. “You over did it in practice, didn’t you?”
“No,” Arthur replies sullenly, leaning against the counter. “I just made a mistake.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She smiles fondly at him as she wraps ice in a dish towel and hands it to Arthur. “You know, it’s okay to be human around me. I don’t mind.”
He eases himself down into one of the kitchen chairs, grimacing in pain as he straightens his leg out. “I know that. I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
“Your coach isn’t letting you race on Thursday, is he?”
Arthur glares at the ice pack in his hand. “No,” he mumbles.
His mother brushes the sweaty hair back from his forehead. “Don’t beat yourself up over this, sweetheart,” she says gently. “No one’s going to think less of you.”
He frowns petulantly, thinking of Eames and how he can balance a play and football at the same time. Meanwhile, Arthur gets distracted thinking about the meaningless kiss Eames gave him in the auditorium and fucks his leg up.
“I’ll be up in my room,” he says, hobbling out of the chair toward the stairs. “If, uh, someone comes by--”
“You mean Eames?” His mother smirks.
Arthur hates that he blushes. “Just send him up.”
“He could stay for dinner, too, if you’d like.”
He’s not in the mood to think about Eames sitting beside him at the dinner table, with their knees pressed together and Eames pretending he loves being in Arthur’s company. He’s not up for watching Eames put on a show for his mom.
“I’ll ask him,” Arthur replies, knowing he’ll never do it. He limps up the stairs, stops at the bathroom to inhale three ibuprofen, and collapses onto his bed with his leg propped up.
Arthur is in the process of glaring a hole in the ceiling when his phone rings.
“Can this wait until later?” he asks when he sees Ariadne’s name on the caller ID.
“Geez, hello to you, too. I take it seeing Eames in all his hot-ass dramatic action didn’t do much for you?”
He pauses, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “How do you know about that?”
“I’m friends with Nick Haver, who’s playing Laertes. He said you snuck in during Eames’ ‘to be or not to be’ speech. Everyone apparently thought you two were really disgustingly adorable.”
“We’re not adorable, god,” Arthur says, groaning as another stab of pain shoots through his leg. “I just wanted to see if he was any good.”
“Sure, like you don’t already know. No one’s requiring you to watch your fake boyfriend’s play rehearsals, Arthur. Especially when it ends up with him kissing you in front of half the cast.”
“It wasn’t even a real kiss, first of all, and second, it would look weird if I didn’t watch them.” He hears Eames’ voice in his head, talking about believability and realism.
Ariadne makes an unimpressed sound. “What are you guys even doing, Arthur? It’s been over three weeks now, practically the whole school thinks you’re this cute couple that, like, makes hearteyes at each other and passes notes. How long are you going to keep this up?”
“It’s just one more week.”
“One more week, and then what? You two just...break up? Like that?” He hears her snap her fingers.
“Basically, yeah.”
“And you pretend to be broken-hearted in the meantime?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because your boyfriend, whom you’re crazy about, just dumped you!”
“Who says Eames is gonna dump me? Maybe I’m the one who’s going to break it off.”
“Have you guys even talked about how this whole break-up situation is going to work? You can’t just show up to school next Monday and pretend like you didn’t spend the last month pretending to be in love with each other.”
An angry heat crawls up the back of his neck. “Why can’t we?”
“Arthur, c’mon. You can’t honestly think you don’t feel anything for Eames at all, not after spending--”
“It was an agreement, okay? Yeah, maybe it was dumb, but that doesn’t mean it was real. A family dinner party and a fake kiss in front of his cast and suddenly we’re destined to be together? Are you kidding me?”
“You know it’s more than that. What about the football party?”
“Fuck the football party, we were drunk!” Arthur says loudly, heart pounding. “He doesn’t give a shit about me, I’m just a way to get his trig grade up. It’s just a game to him.”
Ariadne sighs heavily, like she does when she thinks Arthur’s being an idiot. “You don’t see the way he looks at you sometimes, it’s--god, it’s enough to make me horribly jealous of you, because I can only hope to have someone look at me like that someday, like I’m the only thing that exists in the world. And it’s not because he’s playing a part. He likes you, you moron, and I think he has for a long time.”
It’s exactly what Arthur doesn’t need to hear. Since the night of the dinner party, he’s felt like he’s been right on the verge of doing something dangerous, like actually believing he was...that he might be in...
No. He’s not going to come out of this being the pathetic one. The whole point of their arrangement was to save his pride, and ruining it by actually falling for Eames is more than Arthur wants to think about. He pictures the awkward way Eames will look at him in the halls at school, knowing that Arthur was dumb enough to buy the act. It makes his stomach go cold.
“I’m not naive, Ari,” Arthur says sharply, rubbing at his eyes. “When this week is up, you’ll help me spread the word that Eames and I had a fight and I broke it off, that we’re no longer speaking. That way we won’t have to waste time being around each other to make things look ‘official.’ Then it’ll be over, period, and my fucking life can finally go back to the way it was before I had to pretend Eames meant anything to me.”
“Oh, Arthur.” She sounds so disappointed and sad, but it’s not like Arthur’s pissed at her. He starts to say as much, except he suddenly hears someone quietly clear their throat.
He sits up, eyes going wide.
Eames is standing in his bedroom doorway, his backpack dangling from his hand. His mouth is in a tight line.
“I have to go,” Arthur says quickly, hanging up before Ariadne can object.
Eames’ eyes flick to Arthur’s leg. “What happened?” he asks, but his voice is oddly emotionless.
“Pulled a calf muscle. Coach says I’m out for the rest of the week.” Arthur feels breathless for some reason, anxious.
He wonders how long Eames has been standing there.
Eames nods absently, pulling a couple of wrinkled pieces of notebook paper from his bag. “Here’s my assignment for today,” he says, and crosses the room to hand them to Arthur without meeting his eyes.
Funny how Arthur has an overwhelming urge to say, I’m sorry. “Okay,” he replies instead.
“So...all right, then.” Eames licks his lips slowly, scrubbing a hand through his hair. He looks so completely exhausted, shoulders slumped and dark smudges under his eyes--maybe juggling football and the play hasn’t been so simple after all.
“Mom says you can stay for dinner,” Arthur hears himself say before he can think better of it.
Eames smiles, but it’s brittle, forced. It’s almost a sneer. “And what do you say?”
“I--you can stay if you want. I don’t care.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, apparently. Eames just snorts under his breath and says, “I think I’ll pass.”
You don’t see the way he looks at you sometimes echoes in his head as Eames turns to leave. “I’ll stick this in your locker tomorrow morning,” Arthur calls after him, even though he’s basically done the same thing every morning for almost a month now.
Eames pauses, glances over his shoulder, and says, “Whatever,” in a low, resigned voice.
Arthur/Eames | PG-13 | 2600 words [this part]
i.e. The Fake Boyfriends High School AU
|previous chapters|
I'm sorry Arthur's such a douche. :( He's seventeen. :(
Arthur doesn’t mean to stop. He’s late to practice, as he’s been late to everything today, and he’s well on his way to getting an extra three miles tacked on to his warm-up.
But the doors to the auditorium are wide open, and he can’t help glancing inside. Half a dozen people sit scattered in the front row seats, watching the stage intently.
And there, alone, front and center, is Eames, pacing the length of the stage as he gives the famous soliloquy that must be burned into his brain by now.
He’s utterly magnetic, face hard yet desperate as he struggles with his internal conflict, biting out each word as if it’s ripped from inside him. Eames is Hamlet, and to watch his transformation is...
Arthur leans against the doorway, mouth suddenly dry. He’s seen school productions before, but Eames is on a different level all together. Christ, after all these years, Eames is just now showing the school what he’s capable of, how fucking talented he can be without a damn football in his hands.
Arthur’s duffel bag slides down his arm as he drops into an aisle seat in the very back row. He watches every minute of Eames on stage, all thoughts of practice gone.
“With this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action. Soft you now, the fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remembered,” Eames demands to the room at large, then pauses, looking out into the auditorium.
He looks straight at Arthur.
Eames blinks a few times, slipping out of character. He drops his hand to his side and clears his throat.
“Better, yeah?” he says to Mr. Winslow, the drama coach, who sits in the front row taking notes.
“Much better!” Winslow says. “But you’re losing your momentum halfway through, I’d punch it a little more.”
Eames nods, frowning in thought, and Arthur thinks, heart pounding, Fuck him, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Catelyn gets up from her seat and hops up onto the stage, saying something about running through act two again. The guys playing Polonius and Laertes get up as well, but Eames shrugs, waves his hand vaguely at something, and the next thing Arthur knows, Eames is jogging up the aisle toward him.
Arthur suddenly feels horribly awkward. There’s no reason for him to be here at all, Eames was going to drop by his house later to give him his trig, and Eames knows he’s supposed to be in practice--
But Eames actually grins at him before crouching down beside Arthur’s seat at the end of the aisle. It feels like a real, geniune smile, and warmth blooms in Arthur’s belly.
“Hey,” Eames says softly. “You caught all that.” It’s not a question; he knew the moment Arthur walked in the door.
Arthur chews his lip, fighting a smile of his own. “Yeah, I did. It was--” He clears his throat. “You’re wasted on a shit high school production.”
Eames’ eyes flare, and then he laughs. “Don’t say that too loud, Winslow will have your head,” he says, hands folded on the edge of Arthur’s seat, just enough so that his fingertips dangle along the top of Arthur’s thigh.
He looks--Eames looks happy. Like, a giddy, surprised, excited happy. Arthur wonders how much of it is because he’s here, sitting in the back row without ever asking Eames’ permission.
“You’re not in practice,” he says instead, resisting the stupid urge to play with Eames’ fingers.
“Coach lets me sit out Mondays for rehearsals. As it gets closer to opening night, I’ll probably miss more, maybe even just sit on the sidelines during games. He’s not pleased with me, but he’ll live.” Eames raises an eyebrow. “You’re not in practice, either.”
“No, I, uh.” He glances away. “Just...wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”
“‘Fuss’?” Eames asks. He wrinkles his nose at Arthur. “Is their a fuss about this thing? The only people who will attend opening night are Winslow’s classes, and that’s because their grade depends upon it. Well, them and my mum, of course.”
“And your aunts,” Arthur adds with a smirk.
Something flits across Eames’ expression that makes Arthur’s heart beat faster. “Yeah, my aunts,” he says, quiet, like they’re sharing a secret.
“Eames, it’s your line!” Catelyn yells from the stage.
He huffs, wincing like he’s genuinely irritated to be leaving Arthur’s presence. “So, I’ll just--I’ll see you later, at your place? This afternoon?”
They have a schedule, and Eames knows it. He doesn’t need to ask, and yet Arthur nods and says, “Yeah, my house,” as if they both need reminding.
They just look at each other for a long moment, not quite smiling, until Catelyn yells again and Eames ducks his head, laughing almost shyly.
“Fuck,” he whispers, and then, as he rises to his feet, he leans down and brushes his mouth over Arthur’s--just like he did earlier on the baseball field.
Arthur doesn’t dare breathe.
Eames is gone a second later, not glancing back over his shoulder as he runs back to the stage. He grabs a copy of the play from someone, and Arthur sees Catelyn whisper something in Eames’ ear that makes him grin sheepishly and shrug.
Arthur touches his knuckles to his mouth, thinking, I told him to do that, anyway, but his heart’s not in it. He lets himself smile behind his hand, because no one can see.
He scoops his bag off the floor and hauls ass to practice.
~
Things go to shit when Arthur pulls a muscle in his calf.
He comes down wrong on a rock in the path and trips, wrenching his right leg just before he catches himself. He pauses to catch his breath, stretches his leg and winces, but it’s nothing, he’s had much worse.
Unfortunately, his coach sees the whole thing go down and demands to look Arthur over.
“I’m fine,” Arthur says, gritting his teeth as Coach Nadler massages gently over the back of his calf muscles.
“This doesn’t feel fine and you don’t look fine.” His coach stands back, mouth in a firm line. “You’re not putting your full weight on it.”
Arthur glares and promptly straightens, but a sharp pain bites its way up his leg. He hisses, which makes his coach sigh.
“That’s what I thought,” Coach Nadler says. “Go ice it up. You’re out for the rest of the week.”
There’s a race on Thursday, one Arthur’s practically a shoe-in to win. “But, the race at Lawson--”
“You won’t be racing at all, period, if you don’t take care of yourself.” Coach pats Arthur’s shoulder. “Go home, ice your leg, and take it easy."
Arthur’s never been put out of commission before. There are only so many races in a year, and this is his last year for any of them. A stupid pulled muscle shouldn’t be stopping him like this; he should’ve known better than to not pay attention to his surroundings.
He goes home frustrated and angry, both at himself and at the throbbing pain in his leg. Arthur dumps his bag in the foyer, limping into the kitchen for ice.
His mother is standing at the counter, sorting through the day’s mail. Her eyes go wide when she sees Arthur. “What happened?”
“You’re home early,” Arthur says, ignoring her. He’d really hoped she wouldn’t have to see him like this; he doesn’t like his mother to fuss over him about stupid stuff. She’s got enough to worry about.
She rolls her eyes, immediately going to the freezer. “You over did it in practice, didn’t you?”
“No,” Arthur replies sullenly, leaning against the counter. “I just made a mistake.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She smiles fondly at him as she wraps ice in a dish towel and hands it to Arthur. “You know, it’s okay to be human around me. I don’t mind.”
He eases himself down into one of the kitchen chairs, grimacing in pain as he straightens his leg out. “I know that. I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
“Your coach isn’t letting you race on Thursday, is he?”
Arthur glares at the ice pack in his hand. “No,” he mumbles.
His mother brushes the sweaty hair back from his forehead. “Don’t beat yourself up over this, sweetheart,” she says gently. “No one’s going to think less of you.”
He frowns petulantly, thinking of Eames and how he can balance a play and football at the same time. Meanwhile, Arthur gets distracted thinking about the meaningless kiss Eames gave him in the auditorium and fucks his leg up.
“I’ll be up in my room,” he says, hobbling out of the chair toward the stairs. “If, uh, someone comes by--”
“You mean Eames?” His mother smirks.
Arthur hates that he blushes. “Just send him up.”
“He could stay for dinner, too, if you’d like.”
He’s not in the mood to think about Eames sitting beside him at the dinner table, with their knees pressed together and Eames pretending he loves being in Arthur’s company. He’s not up for watching Eames put on a show for his mom.
“I’ll ask him,” Arthur replies, knowing he’ll never do it. He limps up the stairs, stops at the bathroom to inhale three ibuprofen, and collapses onto his bed with his leg propped up.
Arthur is in the process of glaring a hole in the ceiling when his phone rings.
“Can this wait until later?” he asks when he sees Ariadne’s name on the caller ID.
“Geez, hello to you, too. I take it seeing Eames in all his hot-ass dramatic action didn’t do much for you?”
He pauses, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “How do you know about that?”
“I’m friends with Nick Haver, who’s playing Laertes. He said you snuck in during Eames’ ‘to be or not to be’ speech. Everyone apparently thought you two were really disgustingly adorable.”
“We’re not adorable, god,” Arthur says, groaning as another stab of pain shoots through his leg. “I just wanted to see if he was any good.”
“Sure, like you don’t already know. No one’s requiring you to watch your fake boyfriend’s play rehearsals, Arthur. Especially when it ends up with him kissing you in front of half the cast.”
“It wasn’t even a real kiss, first of all, and second, it would look weird if I didn’t watch them.” He hears Eames’ voice in his head, talking about believability and realism.
Ariadne makes an unimpressed sound. “What are you guys even doing, Arthur? It’s been over three weeks now, practically the whole school thinks you’re this cute couple that, like, makes hearteyes at each other and passes notes. How long are you going to keep this up?”
“It’s just one more week.”
“One more week, and then what? You two just...break up? Like that?” He hears her snap her fingers.
“Basically, yeah.”
“And you pretend to be broken-hearted in the meantime?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because your boyfriend, whom you’re crazy about, just dumped you!”
“Who says Eames is gonna dump me? Maybe I’m the one who’s going to break it off.”
“Have you guys even talked about how this whole break-up situation is going to work? You can’t just show up to school next Monday and pretend like you didn’t spend the last month pretending to be in love with each other.”
An angry heat crawls up the back of his neck. “Why can’t we?”
“Arthur, c’mon. You can’t honestly think you don’t feel anything for Eames at all, not after spending--”
“It was an agreement, okay? Yeah, maybe it was dumb, but that doesn’t mean it was real. A family dinner party and a fake kiss in front of his cast and suddenly we’re destined to be together? Are you kidding me?”
“You know it’s more than that. What about the football party?”
“Fuck the football party, we were drunk!” Arthur says loudly, heart pounding. “He doesn’t give a shit about me, I’m just a way to get his trig grade up. It’s just a game to him.”
Ariadne sighs heavily, like she does when she thinks Arthur’s being an idiot. “You don’t see the way he looks at you sometimes, it’s--god, it’s enough to make me horribly jealous of you, because I can only hope to have someone look at me like that someday, like I’m the only thing that exists in the world. And it’s not because he’s playing a part. He likes you, you moron, and I think he has for a long time.”
It’s exactly what Arthur doesn’t need to hear. Since the night of the dinner party, he’s felt like he’s been right on the verge of doing something dangerous, like actually believing he was...that he might be in...
No. He’s not going to come out of this being the pathetic one. The whole point of their arrangement was to save his pride, and ruining it by actually falling for Eames is more than Arthur wants to think about. He pictures the awkward way Eames will look at him in the halls at school, knowing that Arthur was dumb enough to buy the act. It makes his stomach go cold.
“I’m not naive, Ari,” Arthur says sharply, rubbing at his eyes. “When this week is up, you’ll help me spread the word that Eames and I had a fight and I broke it off, that we’re no longer speaking. That way we won’t have to waste time being around each other to make things look ‘official.’ Then it’ll be over, period, and my fucking life can finally go back to the way it was before I had to pretend Eames meant anything to me.”
“Oh, Arthur.” She sounds so disappointed and sad, but it’s not like Arthur’s pissed at her. He starts to say as much, except he suddenly hears someone quietly clear their throat.
He sits up, eyes going wide.
Eames is standing in his bedroom doorway, his backpack dangling from his hand. His mouth is in a tight line.
“I have to go,” Arthur says quickly, hanging up before Ariadne can object.
Eames’ eyes flick to Arthur’s leg. “What happened?” he asks, but his voice is oddly emotionless.
“Pulled a calf muscle. Coach says I’m out for the rest of the week.” Arthur feels breathless for some reason, anxious.
He wonders how long Eames has been standing there.
Eames nods absently, pulling a couple of wrinkled pieces of notebook paper from his bag. “Here’s my assignment for today,” he says, and crosses the room to hand them to Arthur without meeting his eyes.
Funny how Arthur has an overwhelming urge to say, I’m sorry. “Okay,” he replies instead.
“So...all right, then.” Eames licks his lips slowly, scrubbing a hand through his hair. He looks so completely exhausted, shoulders slumped and dark smudges under his eyes--maybe juggling football and the play hasn’t been so simple after all.
“Mom says you can stay for dinner,” Arthur hears himself say before he can think better of it.
Eames smiles, but it’s brittle, forced. It’s almost a sneer. “And what do you say?”
“I--you can stay if you want. I don’t care.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, apparently. Eames just snorts under his breath and says, “I think I’ll pass.”
You don’t see the way he looks at you sometimes echoes in his head as Eames turns to leave. “I’ll stick this in your locker tomorrow morning,” Arthur calls after him, even though he’s basically done the same thing every morning for almost a month now.
Eames pauses, glances over his shoulder, and says, “Whatever,” in a low, resigned voice.
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