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After the funeral, he finds Eames at the railway station. It’s raining. He stops the car and rolls down the window.
“You’re waiting for the train,” he says.
“No, I’m not,” Eames says, smiling as if there’s no water dripping from him. “You.”
Arthur bites his lip. He should just tell Eames that he’s busy, that he’s got somewhere to be. Eames would recognize the lie and also know why Arthur is lying. Things would go back to normal, only nothing feels normal now and possibly will never again.
“Fine,” Arthur says, and Eames takes his bag, walks around the car and climbs into the passenger seat. He’s soaked. There’s water falling down his face.
“So, where’re you going?” Eames asks, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.
Arthur tries to remember where he’s supposed to be going. But it has been a long day, he’s fucking exhausted, and he hasn’t been alone with Eames since the morning Mal called him.
“Actually, I don’t care,” Eames says. “As long as we can get the fuck out of here.”
Arthur agrees. He starts driving. It’s late in the evening, close to midnight probably, but the clock in the car has stopped. He reaches for his phone to check the time but can’t find it.
“You looked good today,” Eames says, looking through the side window. “I liked your trousers.”
“I wasn’t trying to look good.”
“Bullshit.”
He should tell Eames to shut up. But he was lying, and Eames knows it.
“Anyway,” Eames says, glancing at him. “Are you seeing someone?”
He squeezes the wheel. It’s so dark that he’s got to concentrate on driving. The street lights are dimmer than usually and there’s barely any traffic besides them. “Fuck you,” he says as slowly as he can. “We’re married.”
He can hear Eames breathing in and out. “Yes, we are. So, you remember.”
“I didn’t leave you,” he says. “I left because Mal called.”
“You left because you wanted to bring Dom back,” Eames says.
“No, it wasn’t like that.”
“Arthur, Dom is dead.”
Arthur takes a deep breath. “I know . I know he’s dead. We just were at the funeral.”
“You looked very pretty,” Eames says, watching him. “Like the first time I saw you. Can you remember?”
“No.”
“Yeah, me neither.” Eames pauses. The street lights are coming back, but they are flickering. It’s still raining but Arthur can’t hear the rain. “It must’ve been when you were doing one of your first jobs with Dom and Mal.”
“You were a pain in the ass.”
Eames laughs.
“You thought everything was funny,” Arthur says.
“I thought you were funny.”
“Yeah. And I was trying to be serious. I was trying to impress Dom and Mal. And you. And you didn’t take anything seriously.”
“You did impress me, darling,” Eames says in a soft voice which has always meant danger. That’s the voice that makes Arthur do unthinkable things, things he could never imagine otherwise. Like, falling in love.
“You just liked my ass,” he says. His throat feels tight.
“That too.”
The street lights go off again. Arthur can’t see the road. He can’t see his own hands, and he can’t see Eames, either, but he can hear Eames breathing. He would know that sound anywhere. He would know that sound even if he was dreaming.
“I wish you hadn’t left me,” Eames says in the dark.
“I didn’t leave you,” Arthur says. “I had to bring Dom back.”
He’s not exactly surprised that Eames doesn’t answer him. They always had an argument about this. Eames thought Arthur was too eager to do what Dom asked, too eager to please him, too hungry for Dom’s approval. At first Arthur thought Eames was wrong. Then he tried to hide it. Then Mal and Dom got stuck on the other side for what was half of a lifetime for them, and only Mal came back. She called Arthur. She was crying. She didn’t ask him to go after Dom but he offered anyway.
“We had problems before that,” he tells Eames now. “You were always disappointed at me and didn’t say it. And we weren’t having sex. The reason why we were… the reason why we aren’t… we didn’t break up because of Dom.” He takes a deep breath. It doesn’t feel like he’s breathing. “We didn’t break up. We just… we just took some time off from each other. Right?”
The street lights come back. He looks at Eames, but Eames isn’t there.
**
“It’s a marvellous thing!” Dom said a long time ago, in a different place. “New technology to find intersections between parallel universes!” And Arthur was listening to him. From the first day, he always listened to Dom. Later he would have fights about it with Eames, and then, silence that would feel heavy enough to break his skull. Maybe it did. He certainly has a headache.
But back then, Dom talked to him about things that gave him everything he hadn’t thought possible to ask for. After years of calculations and development, scientists had finally managed to build a prototype of a machine that could create gateways between parallel universes. There would be something same in all of them, and something different. From now on, the humankind would have a chance to learn from the mistakes that had never been made - in that particular universe. Life was full of choices. There was an unimaginable amount of mistakes that could be made. And someone had made them. Every single mistake possible had been made somewhere, sometime, and they had to find it, and learn from it. No more mistakes! No more choices that look trivial at the time and end up causing famine or war!
“But that’s not why you were excited,” Eames says. “Don’t lie.”
Arthur blinks. The lights are back. He’s driving a quiet highway. When he squeezes his fingers around the wheel, he can feel it. The rain has got lighter. And when he looks right, Eames is sitting next to him, wearing his black coat, soaked from the rain, and the tie he probably loosened even before the ceremony was over. He’s like that. Always was.
“You,” Eames says, watching him, “were excited because you thought you wouldn’t miss anything. In your life. You thought you could visit all the universes, meet all the other versions of you and see the choices they had made, and you would know what is the right way to live. You thought you could avoid pain.”
“That’s not completely true. I married you.”
Eames laughs. God, Arthur’s missed that sound. “Yeah, that’s right. You married me. That was very brave of you.”
Yeah, it was. “Yeah, it was.”
“And look how well it turned.”
“You don’t mean that,” he says. “We’ve been fighting for a long time. I was trying to tell you that, but you disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Eames says. “When did I disappear?”
“Just now.”
“No, I’ve been here the whole time,” Eames says. He’s not laughing anymore. “You disappeared. Mal called you and asked you to help Dom and you left me in the middle of a fight and went looking for him.”
“I thought I would come right back.”
“Yeah, well -”
“Anyway,” Arthur says, “it wasn’t my fault.”
“What wasn’t?”
“That I was scared of living.”
“Everyone’s scared of living,” Eames says in a quiet voice. “It’s just that we don’t really have a choice.”
“I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t fuck up,” Arthur says. “Because this is my only life. I wanted to get it right.”
“You were doing just fine.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You met me,” Eames says. “You didn’t think you would fall in love, but you did. And you kissed me.”
“Yeah.”
“You asked me to come to your house,” Eames says, “and you looked so nervous, and like you were trying to hide that you fancied me, but you were very bad at hiding anything, dear, you were so incredibly obvious. I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t been so into you. And then when we went to your place, you barely got over the threshold before you kissed me.”
“I was afraid that I’d chicken out.”
“You took a chance,” Eames says. “It was worth it.”
“Was it?” Arthur asks.
“Was it?” Eames asks, and then the street lights flicker and he’s gone again. The passenger seat is cold when Arthur presses his hand against it, and then he realizes he’s lost the road.
**
The thing about love, he thinks when he’s still driving in the dark and Eames is nowhere to be seen, and he’s slowly starting to doubt if anything was ever real, the thing about love is that there’s nothing more terrifying than trying to hold onto it. It’s so fragile. It shouldn’t be. It doesn’t sound fragile in the stories. It doesn’t sound fragile when other people talk about it. But when you live with it, when you actually hold it in your hands and try to keep it, it turns into the most breakable thing in the whole world, and the most precious.
He stops the car and steps out. The landscape is blank like it hasn't been created yet. The raining has stopped. He’s wearing the clothes that he chose for the funeral - his favorite suit, his favorite tie, the trousers that are just a little bit too tight, says Eames. But Eames is wrong about that. Also, Eames shouldn’t complain, since every time Arthur wears those trousers, he can’t stop staring.
Or he couldn’t, before. Maybe he got used to Arthur’s ass at some point. Maybe things, even good things, lose grow smaller when they become familiar. Maybe that’s why everything started slipping through Arthur’s fingers. Maybe that’s why he took more and more work and tried to open new gateways with Dom and Mal and tried to explore the one parallel universe where they actually were able to travel to. At home, he tried to avoid Eames’ gaze because he was starting to think he wasn’t what Eames wanted.
“You’re wrong,” Eames says.
Arthur flinches. Eames is standing next to him at the side of the road, watching the blank scenery.
“You weren’t everything that I wanted,” Eames says. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yeah,” Eames says. “Life is like that. We only get to try once.”
“You said I was working too much.”
“You were.”
“You were jealous of Dom.”
Eames sighs. “Yeah. Sorry. But you see, I could’ve never been everything you wanted, either. It just doesn’t work like that.”
“What doesn’t work like that?”
“Life.”
“Well, I think you would know.”
“I know something,” Eames says. “I know that we have to try our best, and I know that we only get to try once, and the life we have is the only one we are ever going to get. So there’s no point in comparing it to anything.”
“The other me,” Arthur says, “has done some things differently.”
“We’re only going to have this one life,” Eames says, “and we’ll never know what things would have been like, if we had chosen otherwise.”
“I’m not saying that the things are better in that parallel universe,” Arthur says. “Maybe they’re just different. But they are different.”
“And we’ll never get to know the lives we didn’t live,” Eames says. “But it’s alright, because we can’t have more than one, anyway.” He glances at Arthur. “But we can have one.”
Arthur stares at him. There’s something he should remember. He has almost forgotten that he’s forgotten it. But he doesn’t remember what it is.
“We should get back to the car,” he says finally.
“Of course,” Eames says.
But when Arthur starts the car, Eames isn’t there anymore.
**
He drives alone in the rain for hours. It must be the morning already, but all the clocks are frozen and there’s no light on the horizon and the road doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. He misses Eames terribly. He has missed Eames terribly ever since the morning when Mal called him and said that Dom thought the parallel universe was the real one, that what he had there was his real life, his better life, and the other one was just a dream. And Mal cried on the phone and said she would go bring Dom back, but she couldn’t leave her children, not anymore.
Arthur said he would do it.
He went through the gate again and met Dom in a very sunny day in a café in Paris.
Maybe he forgot for a moment that he was missing Eames. But it came back. It started like a headache after a poorly slept night: quietly, in the background, until suddenly it’s so bad you can barely think about anything else. And then he tried to come back. For Eames. He just didn’t remember how to anymore.
“I know you’re trying,” Eames says.
Arthur closes his eyes for a second. “Thank god you’re here.”
“Eyes on the road,” Eames says. “I didn’t think you meant it. I thought you would come back in a few days and we’d make up and then maybe have sex. Or not have sex. I wouldn’t have cared either way. But I know you didn’t give up on me.”
“I love you,” Arthur says, glancing at him.
“Yeah, I know,” Eames says. “I love you too. Obviously.”
“But we’ve been together for six years.”
“Yeah.”
“And married two years.”
“Yeah. I can count.”
“Barely,” Arthur says. “Anyway, I thought our relationship was changing. I thought I was losing you.”
“Darling,” Eames says, “you were always going to lose me.”
Arthur takes a deep breath. There’s something wrong with his fingers. He can’t feel them, and there’s ground underneath his fingernails.
“That’s just life,” Eames says in a quiet voice that sounds like it’s coming from far away. “You’re going to lose everything in the end.”
“I tried to hold onto you.”
“I know,” Eames says. “I’m trying to hold onto you right now.”
“I was so worried that we weren’t having enough sex,” Arthur says. “But I didn’t want to talk about it, because I thought it’d make it worse. And you were already disappointed at me.”
“I don’t give a fuck about sex. But I would give anything if I could just touch your face now.”
“I’m right here.”
Eames looks at him.
“I’m right here,” he says, “I’m right here, I’m right -” He takes a deep breath. He’s not driving on the road. He’s not holding the wheel. There’s ground underneath his fingertips and through his skin, he can see his bones. “Eames -”
“Arthur.”
“I’ve forgotten something.”
“Yes,” Eames says.
“It’s important.”
“Yes,” Eames says and clears his throat, “but it’s alright. You don’t need to remember. Not right now.”
“I remember our wedding day,” Arthur says. His heart is beating. It's beating like it’s about to break. “I was so nervous I threw up fifteen minutes before I was supposed to be on the aisle.”
“I threw up five minutes before,” Eames says. “But I never told you because I thought you liked me because I was reckless.”
“It was reckless to get married.”
“Yeah,” Eames says. “Also the best choice I’ve ever made.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Even considering -”
“Yes.”
“You look very nice, by the way,” Arthur says, nodding at him. “The suit. It looks good. That’s the suit I bought for you in New York, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Eames says. “I thought you’d appreciate it.”
“I do.”
“I talked to Mal.”
“Oh? How’s she?”
“A mess,” Eames says. “I’m not sure if we’re good for each other, or terrible.”
“I think it’s good that you are friends with her. I’m worried about her.” Arthur pauses. “I think Dom’s lost.”
“Yeah,” Eames says, “I think you’re right.”
“I tried to find him.”
“I know.”
“There’s something I should remember,” Arthur says, and Eames disappears.
**
“You keep disappearing from me,” he says, when Eames is sitting next to him in the car again. It’s raining again but the road is vanished and the car is in the middle of the sea. It doesn’t sink. Arthur suspects that it might, soon. “Are you slipping? Back and forth, through the gateway?”
“Maybe,” Eames says.
“Don’t lose yourself.”
“I won’t.”
“I think,” Arthur says, “maybe we aren’t supposed to know about the other lives. Maybe we’re supposed to only know one life.”
“You might be right.”
“If I could go back,” he tells Eames, “I would kiss you and tell you that I love you. And that sometimes I’m tired and everything’s scary and I’m scared of losing you and don’t know what to do, but I still love you. And then we’d have pizza and watch television.”
“Funny,” Eames says, “because if I could go back, I would do exactly the same.”
“Are you sure you can’t touch me?”
Eames looks at Arthur for a moment and then raises his hand to touch Arthur’s face.
**
The first time Eames touched him was in an abandoned office building they were using when they worked with Dom and Mal. Arthur was early, Eames was on time, and Dom and Mal were late. Arthur was sitting at his desk in the corner, trying to research every detail of the project because that was his job - to know everything that could go wrong. Eames walked in, stopped at his desk and patted him on the shoulder.
When he kissed Eames for the first time in his flat something like a month later, he thought for a second Eames might push him away. Maybe he had mistaken. He sometimes read things wrong. Sometimes things happened that he hadn’t seen coming. And he hated that.
“Oh, god, finally ,” Eames said and kissed him back.
When Arthur woke up the next morning, his first instinct was to sneak out. Then he remembered they were at his flat.
“Hey,” Eames said, lying in the bed next to him. “Are you awake?”
He rolled onto his side, facing Eames. “Yeah.”
“I could hear it from your breathing,” Eames said, watching him. “Don’t panic.”
“I’m not panicking.”
“I loved what we did last night and I’d like to do it again.”
He bit his lip. “Cheesy.”
“Yeah,” Eames said, “but it’s working, right?”
They got married four years later. Eames’ vows made everyone laugh, so it was a mystery why Arthur was crying.
“Don’t cry,” Eames tells him now. “I can’t stand it.”
“I’m not crying,” he says. He’s driving on the shore somewhere. It must be morning because there’s light everywhere, even though he can’t figure out where the sun is. The waves are hitting the rocks in the beach. Further away, he can see cliffs crumbling into the sea. Everything’s falling apart.
He stops the car and gets out. He can’t feel his body. The car sinks into the sand and looks like it’s been stuck in there for decades, but Eames follows him, his hands pushed into his pockets and his face worried.
“Don’t cry, Arthur,” Eames says.
“You aren’t real, are you?”
Eames stops next to him. They’re standing in the water. “Everything we ever had was real.”
He looks at Eames. Eames looks like he did the morning Arthur left their house for the last time. He has wrinkles around his eyes, he hasn’t shaved, there’s the scar on his lower lip that he got from stumbling over his shoelaces, and the edges of his body are softer than when they met. He’s wearing the suit.
“I can’t remember the funeral,” Arthur says.
Eames chews on his lower lip. He always did that. “That’s because you weren’t there.”
“What’re you going to do now?”
“I don’t know,” Eames says.
“You have to live.”
Eames looks at him. “I know that.”
“Good,” he says, turning his eyes to the sea. “The car’s disappeared.”
“Arthur,” Eames says, “you never had a car. You don’t have a driving licence.”
“Shit.”
“I know.”
“I guess I could just sit down,” Arthur says. The water doesn’t reach his feet anymore. He sits down on the sand and Eames sits next to him. “Can you stay for a little while longer?”
“Maybe,” Eames says. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
They sit in the sand. The waves grow bolder again. And then the light goes off.