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The seasons are changing. Eames barely notices it now, can escape to wherever it stays warm and humid, wherever the tables at the casinos are flush with people longing to be parted with their money, but in London it's cold and damp and every reason he left home, every reason he keeps leaving home, alighting on the ground and then escaping days later, remembering why he left in the first place.
The cold and damp suits Arthur. He bundles up in layers like protection. Eames can't imagine him in shorts, can't imagine him in a shirt that would show his wrists, pale forearms, smooth biceps. There's something wrong about the fact he belongs in a different season than Eames, another reason this won't work at all.
It's hot where they are. It's hot, and it's muggy, Eames' perfect season, and Arthur's sweating, wiping his face with a handkerchief that Eames' is so very unsurprised he has. He's sweating, but he refuses to take off his jacket, he refuses to take off any layer that would make him a little more human, a little more imperfect. Eames sometimes wonders if he showers naked, or if even that is too pedestrian for him.
But he knows the answer, he knows the scope of Arthur's body, knows the slick of sweat on his back, knows what it feels to have Arthur beneath him, uninterrupted skin that seems made for him because no one else gets to see it. He knows the taste of Arthur's stomach, and how it's not quite the same as the vulnerable nape of his neck. He knows the taste of the sweat that's rolling down Arthur's cheek.
"This isn't civilized," Arthur says, mopping at his face, and Eames thinks that's the goddamn point.
Of course Arthur wouldn't see the logic in that. Of course Arthur wouldn't know.
*
Eames can't get the taste of Arthur out of his mouth. It's there like the bite of a cigarette, like the aftertaste of scotch, heavy on the tongue. It lingers. There isn't even any definition of the taste, nothing better than Arthur to describe it, just a bite on the mouth, the weight of Arthur's cock on his tongue, the way Arthur's thighs part without argument.
There isn't anything to describe it, and there's no reason for it to linger, for Eames to be on a flight somewhere, nowhere, simply a flight away from Arthur, and for him to touch his mouth to hold it in, somehow, to try to keep the taste like it'll keep the feeling intact. Like it's a guarantee for it to happen again. Like there's any guarantee. As if every time he leaves there's any promise he'll be back and that Arthur will be waiting for him.
They don't make promises. They can't.
*
It's just another job. It's a job like any other job, albeit a job that means they kill, a job that kills them every single day, Arthur's finger on the trigger and the explosion of brain that Eames swears he feels every time, the jerk of waking up alive, but just a little less.
It's a job like any other job, except that Eames is always on the run from someone, someone he has wronged, because it's his job to wrong them. He'd like to think that if it wasn't his job, he wouldn't do it, but he would. He'd like to think he'd never wrong anyone without a paycheck on the line, but that's not true. There's something thrilling about someone's face when they realize they've been betrayed. There's something even more thrilling when he's the one who did it.
Eames will admit he is not a sentimental man. He has loved people, in his way, he has taken them as they came, and he has mourned them, a little, when he has to let them go, when he hops on a plane and leaves them, leaves them in tears and a little broken. He has grown tired of it. He has grown tired of slipping into people's beds, easy, slipping into their heads, just as easy, and ruining them from the inside out.
He can't figure Arthur out. Or he can, he has, has figured him out in pieces, in habits, has figured him out in stages, but the thing is, he doesn't know what to do with that information. He knows that he could tear Arthur down. He just doesn't know what the point would be, whether there'd be any point to taking everything Arthur is and throwing the mess back in his face like a curse.
He'd like to think he's never going to betray Arthur, not for any reason, not for a paycheck and not to survive, but he knows that isn't true. He knows that it's just a matter of time before he finds that betrayed look on Arthur's face, and he knows that look is going to be sour, knows that look is going to make him sick.
That doesn't mean he won't do it.
*
Eames had never seen Arthur cry before. He never wanted to. But Mal was dead, gorgeous Mal who never had a bad word for anyone, and they were in a hotel room, an anonymous hotel room and Arthur's shoulders were shaking. Arthur was bawling like a child.
He shouldn't have been here, he shouldn't have been witnessing this, he should've made his excuses and never apologized for that bit of fear, but instead he stayed, separate, not even close enough to touch, and watched every bit of composure Arthur gathered around himself like a shield crumble into nothing.
Arthur had been all clean sorrow at the funeral, had held Phillipa's clutching hand and had nodded to Eames like the loosest of acquaintances, but there was nothing of that here, there was nothing about him that was clean or right, just a child, a child who'd lost everything he thought was his, and Eames thought, right then, that maybe he loved him, a little.
*
Eames has never been in love before, not really. He's been in love with the way a woman looks in a dress, has been in love with the curve of someone's neck, in love with a laugh, but he's never been in love with a person, never looked at the entire whole and not found anything to hate.
Arthur isn't perfect. Arthur tries to be, but he isn't, not even close, and Eames wants him so much that it makes his teeth hurt, makes him ill, sitting at a roulette wheel half a world away and wanting to touch the small of Arthur's back, wanting to listen to Arthur cut him down to shards.
He's never been in love before, and he'd like to think that's the way it's going to stay, that he can just coast through life, entirely incapable of love, and take people and discard them and have it all be clean, no mess of an affair, simply sex and companionship and laughter.
He doesn't think it's going to work out that way, this time. This time, he doesn't know what he will do when it ends, when Arthur figures him out as well as he has Arthur figured out, when Arthur figures him out and realises there's nothing he has to offer.
*
Arthur is beautiful in death. He's beautiful in life as well, impeccable, but in death there's something in his features that softens, that makes Eames think of what he would be in sleep, except for the fact in sleep he is the same, impeccable. It takes death to loosen Arthur up. The thought should be funny. Instead it's just sad.
Arthur is beautiful in death, and Eames takes a moment, takes a moment to run his hand through Arthur's hair, through the mess of blood in his hair, loosen it out of shape, into something childish, playful, gelled spikes warm with blood. He kisses Arthur's cheek, still warm, not real, then he puts the gun in his mouth, runs his tongue over the taste of gunpowder, the whole slick mess of death, and he pulls the trigger.
*
"I don't want this," Arthur says to him one day, not looking at him, Eames' hand still lingering on his wrist where he'd wrapped it a moment before.
"No?" Eames asks, and he allows himself a smile because Arthur isn't looking, because Arthur can't even look him in the eye and say it.
"No," Arthur says, but he lets Eames touch his jaw, tilt his head to meet his eyes.
"No?" Eames asks again, and when Arthur opens his mouth, Eames covers it with his own.
Arthur sleeps beside him that night, sleeps like the dead, unmoving, his face pillowed by the curve of Eames' shoulder, and Eames thinks perhaps he should let him go.
Eames is not a good man. He knows he isn't, he knows there's nothing kind left in him, so while he should let Arthur go, he should give him a chance to extricate himself before this gets messy, gets overblown, gets impossible to escape without scars, he won't do it. He can't do it.
He holds Arthur through the night, and he cannot let go.